imortal
Member
+240|6636|Austin, TX
There is a saying that was being tossed around on FOXNews a few days ago, "Democrats worry about voter intimidation; Republicans worry about voter fraud."  We hear all the time about how worried they are that people will intimidate or threaten voters so they will not come out, but you actually hear very little in the news about actual incidents.

What I am concerned about is voter fraud.  There are 2 main ways voter fraud can occur.  The kind that is most publicized and most often caught are people with homes in two different states registering to vote in both states, usually sending in an absentee ballot to the second state.  This we hear about (if you look) because it is actually caught; the person usually uses their real name and SSN.

The other type of voter fraud, the kind we do not hear about too much, is just going to vote as someone else.  In nearly all of the US, there is no ID check to verify identity when you come to vote.  The most they do is ask your name, and (maybe) a bit of confirming info such as where you live or the last 4 of your SSN.  Why is this so insidious?  Because, as long as you know a couple basic facts about someone you know is registered to vote, then you can vote FOR them.  If you have enough names and info, and don't try to vote all in the same voting location, you can vote 5, 6 times.  More, if you live in a state with early voting.

So, what groups are well known for voter drives, especially drives in which homeless people and drug addicts (who hardly seem be people closely interested in political affairs) are registered to vote, and what party are they most commonly associated with?  Which party blocks and/or votes down ANY attempt to require a photo ID to vote?  Does this explain why Republicans are worried about voter fraud?

(Vote Early; Vote Often; Vote Democrat!)
topal63
. . .
+533|6689
Please demonstrate your spurious statement with actual cases; numerous cases that is. And, while you're at it demonstrate it is of epidemic proportions, that numerous thingy, that indicates a presidential election; this election; is actually being influenced.

Please elucidate your urban republican myth - with some concrete facts instead of tired rhetoric.

Last edited by topal63 (2008-10-28 11:31:46)

san4
The Mas
+311|6659|NYC, a place to live
One problem with all the paranoia about voter fraud is that it is extremely expensive and cumbersome. The cost and manpower required makes it extremely unlikely to affect significant numbers of votes.
topal63
. . .
+533|6689

san4 wrote:

One problem with all the paranoia about voter fraud is that it is extremely expensive and cumbersome. The cost and manpower required makes it extremely unlikely to affect significant numbers of votes.
Actually his OP contains a kernel of truth.

The truth is registered democrat and independent voters outnumber registered republicans something like 72 + 42 million to 55 million.

If the independent vote splits down the middle a republican minority still has no hope. That is why republicans use every dirty trick in the book to suppress the vote. The numbers are against them - from the get go.

Last edited by topal63 (2008-10-28 11:42:01)

san4
The Mas
+311|6659|NYC, a place to live

imortal wrote:

So, what groups are well known for voter drives, especially drives in which homeless people and drug addicts (who hardly seem be people closely interested in political affairs) are registered to vote, and what party are they most commonly associated with?
Encouraging homeless people and drug addicts to vote is obviously not fraud. This a revealing error in the OP.
13rin
Member
+977|6450
I thought one had to pay like 800k to Acorn to get that kind of epidemic proportions of voter fraud.
I stood in line for four hours. They better give me a Wal-Mart gift card, or something.  - Rodney Booker, Job Fair attendee.
imortal
Member
+240|6636|Austin, TX

topal63 wrote:

Please demonstrate your spurious statement with actual cases; numerous cases that is. And, while you're at demonstrate it is of epidemic proportions, that numerous thingy, that indicates a presidential election; this election; is actually being influenced.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1225067 … lenews_wsj

WSJ wrote:

...Vote fraud is real and can affect elections. In 2001, the Palm Beach Post reported that more than 5,600 people who voted in Florida in the 2000 Presidential election had names and data that perfectly matched a statewide list of suspected felons who were barred from voting. Florida was decided by about 500 votes.

In 2003, the Indiana Supreme Court overturned the result of a mayor's race because of absentee ballot fraud -- a case that led to a stricter Indiana ID law recently upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. A 2005 Tennessee state Senate race was voided after evidence of voting by felons, nonresidents and the deceased. A Washington State Superior Court judge found that the state's 2004 gubernatorial race, which Democrat Christine Gregoire won by 133 votes, had included at least 1,678 illegal votes.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid= … refer=home

bloomberg wrote:

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) is drawing intensifying fire in the final days of the presidential campaign. ACORN, as the group is known, is ostensibly involved in the commendable job of registering voters.

The problem is, it has been caught numerous times registering people who either don't exist or aren't eligible to vote. The misdeeds have been widespread. ACORN members in Colorado, Washington, Wisconsin and Missouri have been convicted of voter registration fraud, and investigations are open in Nevada, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Indiana.

Many counties have reported that registration cards submitted by ACORN -- an organization that advocates for liberal causes such as higher minimum wages and unionizing efforts -- and its affiliates contain more errors than any other voter- registration group. Election officials in several states have said at least 20 percent of ACORN registration forms are faulty.

ACORN's defenders have said that the actions of overzealous ACORN workers to register Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck won't influence the election because ``Mickey'' will never vote. For example, Politico.com's Ben Smith earlier this month argued that ``the key distinction here is between voter fraud and voter registration fraud, one of which is truly dangerous, the other a petty crime.'' ...

...Investigators later found that 160 voters had been illegally registered during the election, and many of the illegitimate ballots were sent to the tavern. The bar owner was fined $7,000 for the offense, according to the Las Vegas Review Journal. ...
http://www.pubrecord.org/nationworld/431.html?task=view

public record wrote:

More than one million residents of Ohio intend to vote in next week’s presidential election via absentee ballot, an unprecedented number that will likely result in historic voter turnout in the battleground state, according to Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner.

Brunner said she expects more than six million Ohioans to vote on Nov. 4, about 80 percent, and absentee ballots are expected to represent one-third of total voter turnout. Thus far, absentee ballots represent about 22.5 percent of voters.

She said the campaign between Senators Barack Obama and John McCain is the first presidential election “where any voter can request an absentee ballot without a reason, a process commonly referred to as “no fault” absentee voting.”

Voting by absentee ballot is seen as a way of ensuring votes are counted, although there are numerous cases where absentee ballots have disappeared or were purged.
http://www.yesweekly.com/article-951-br … looms.html

Yes! weekly wrote:

When Ethel Ellis Johnson, a 68-year-old resident of the Rankin School Place apartments, turned up at White Oak Grove Baptist Church to vote in the May 6 primary election, poll workers redirected her to the polling place at Rankin Elementary because she had moved in the summer of 2005. The last time Johnson, an Obama supporter, had voted was in 1992, when she cast her ballot for Democrat Bill Clinton, and she had not changed her voter information at the time of the 2008 primary.

Greensboro police Detective Tom Lippa recalled later that when Johnson presented herself at the Rankin Elementary polling place she was upset that poll workers wanted her to vote on a provisional paper ballot. Guilford County Deputy Election Director Charlie Collicutt said Johnson was entitled to cast her vote on an electronic voting machine, like all other registered voters who lived in that precinct. So Johnson voted on a machine, in which the ballots cast are not retrievable.

And then — if two Authorization To Vote, or ATV forms on file at the Guilford County Board of Elections are to be believed — Johnson voted a second time at the same polling place on the same day. The names and dates of birth on the two ATVs are exactly the same and Johnson’s signatures appear to be identical, but different poll workers initialed the forms and the two sequence numbers, 196 and 412, indicate that more than 200 voters passed through the line between Johnson’s two visits.
Epidemic proportions, eh?  If I recall what I wrote, I said that it was something I was concerned about.  I do not think I ever cried that the sky was falling.  But did I think I provided some cases, as you requested.
CameronPoe
Member
+2,925|6526
Ah, so the reason the Republicans are going to lose the election is because of voter fraud. I see.
imortal
Member
+240|6636|Austin, TX

san4 wrote:

imortal wrote:

So, what groups are well known for voter drives, especially drives in which homeless people and drug addicts (who hardly seem be people closely interested in political affairs) are registered to vote, and what party are they most commonly associated with?
Encouraging homeless people and drug addicts to vote is obviously not fraud. This a revealing error in the OP.
Not a revealing error, just a difference of assumptions.

When you see a policital action comittee scouring people who one would not assume to be too connected to the community, filling out voter registration forms for them, and taking them to be turned in, you see someone doing a noble and selfless act to help that person find a voice in the political system.  I see someone trolling for an additional vote to turn in for their candidate.
imortal
Member
+240|6636|Austin, TX

CameronPoe wrote:

Ah, so the reason the Republicans are going to lose the election is because of voter fraud. I see.
Maybe, just maybe.  It could also be the McCain is about as charismatic as a week-old fish.  I think it is, however, an issue to be looked into.

By the way, do you actually practice being condensending, or is it a natural gift?
topal63
. . .
+533|6689
Please demonstrate how ACORN, who is required by law to turn on all collected registrations, committed voter fraud. Known registration problems is not voter fraud. The low paying job (registering people) - has resulted in a easily to deal with problem. And ACORN has a system to deal with it: when people don't actually bother doing there job.

So, some sleazeball lowlife with no integrity goes to a phone book and copies it down and then turns it in to ACORN, they are by law forced to accept it, then they separate them into piles. Those completely conspicuous registrations - already flagged as suspicious by ACORN - will end up with no one actually voting and committing voter fraud. If you think the whole team of the Dallas Cowboy or Mickey Mouse is actually showing up at polling booth and committing fraud, well, then you are believing in a myth...
Pug
UR father's brother's nephew's former roommate
+652|6513|Texas - Bigger than France

topal63 wrote:

Please demonstrate how ACORN, who is required by law to turn on all collected registrations, committed voter fraud. Known registration problems is not voter fraud. The low paying job (registering people) - has resulted in a easily to deal with problem. And ACORN has a system to deal with it: when people don't actually bother doing there job.

So, some sleazeball lowlife with no integrity goes to a phone book and copies it down and then turns it in to ACORN, they are by law forced to accept it, then they separate them into piles. Those completely conspicuous registrations - already flagged as suspicious by ACORN - will end up with no one actually voting and committing voter fraud. If you think the whole team of the Dallas Cowboy or Mickey Mouse is actually showing up at polling booth and committing fraud, well, then you are believing in a myth...
Ok, before we start getting into a full blown discussion here...

...does voter fraud exist on both sides?

Yes or no?

Will it happen in this election?

yes or no?

Will it impact the election results?

yes or no?

And based on these answers...wtf are you guys going to argue about?
CameronPoe
Member
+2,925|6526

imortal wrote:

By the way, do you actually practice being condensending, or is it a natural gift?
lol. It's an internet-only persona. No offence intended.
imortal
Member
+240|6636|Austin, TX
As for voter registration fraud:
ACORN
ACORN, which said it registered about 1.3 million voters nationwide this year, is facing similar allegations in several other states. The group has encountered complaints of fraud stemming from registration efforts in Wisconsin, North Carolina, New Mexico, Michigan, Ohio and Missouri.
ACORN again
King County prosecutors filed felony charges Thursday against seven people in what a top official described as the worst case of voter-registration fraud in state history, while the organization they worked for agreed to keep a better eye on its employees and pay $25,000 to defray costs of the investigation.

The seven submitted about 1,800 registration cards last fall on behalf of the liberal Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, which had hired them at $8 an hour to sign people up to vote, according to charging documents filed in Superior Court.
Or how about a "fraud map?"

http://www.krcg.com/news/news_story.aspx?id=204257
"There was a recent case in Jackson County Missouri," Danforth said by phone. "Where the same person was registered 10 times under 10 different addresses, different social security numbers."
Maybe they just liked to register.  Nobody said they were actually going to vote, right?

Last edited by imortal (2008-10-28 12:09:07)

Pug
UR father's brother's nephew's former roommate
+652|6513|Texas - Bigger than France
I withdraw my earlier comment.  I want to see more about this nut organization
imortal
Member
+240|6636|Austin, TX

Pug wrote:

topal63 wrote:

Please demonstrate how ACORN, who is required by law to turn on all collected registrations, committed voter fraud. Known registration problems is not voter fraud. The low paying job (registering people) - has resulted in a easily to deal with problem. And ACORN has a system to deal with it: when people don't actually bother doing there job.

So, some sleazeball lowlife with no integrity goes to a phone book and copies it down and then turns it in to ACORN, they are by law forced to accept it, then they separate them into piles. Those completely conspicuous registrations - already flagged as suspicious by ACORN - will end up with no one actually voting and committing voter fraud. If you think the whole team of the Dallas Cowboy or Mickey Mouse is actually showing up at polling booth and committing fraud, well, then you are believing in a myth...
Ok, before we start getting into a full blown discussion here...

...does voter fraud exist on both sides?

Yes or no?

Will it happen in this election?

Yes or no?

Will it impact the election results?

yes or no? maybe

And based on these answers...wtf are you guys going to argue about?
If Obama wins in a blowout, there will be very little indeed to argue about.  But in a very close election, as this one is shaping up to, it could mean a lot more.  This is not much of an argument, though.  I raised a concern, and then it has not been debated or argued; I was simply ridiculed.
topal63
. . .
+533|6689

Pug wrote:

topal63 wrote:

Please demonstrate how ACORN, who is required by law to turn on all collected registrations, committed voter fraud. Known registration problems is not voter fraud. The low paying job (registering people) - has resulted in a easily to deal with problem. And ACORN has a system to deal with it: when people don't actually bother doing there job.

So, some sleazeball lowlife with no integrity goes to a phone book and copies it down and then turns it in to ACORN, they are by law forced to accept it, then they separate them into piles. Those completely conspicuous registrations - already flagged as suspicious by ACORN - will end up with no one actually voting and committing voter fraud. If you think the whole team of the Dallas Cowboy or Mickey Mouse is actually showing up at polling booth and committing fraud, well, then you are believing in a myth...
Ok, before we start getting into a full blown discussion here...

...does voter fraud exist on both sides?

Yes or no?

Will it happen in this election?

yes or no?

Will it impact the election results?

yes or no?

And based on these answers...wtf are you guys going to argue about?
LOL, I think suppression of voters by dirty tricks can affect the vote count significantly.

I know electronic voter fraud leaves no paper trail. There the system has no veracity - so it's impact is unknown; but hypothetically massive fraud is a possibility.

As far as individual voter fraud - it is of virtually no statistical significance in a nationwide election.
Pug
UR father's brother's nephew's former roommate
+652|6513|Texas - Bigger than France

imortal wrote:

I was simply ridiculed.
Take it as a compliment.
Mekstizzle
WALKER
+3,611|6592|London, England
Hell I could probably go down there and vote

Infact, didn't someone do something just like that? Not seriously, but as part of some experiment or I think it was a journalist or something.
san4
The Mas
+311|6659|NYC, a place to live

imortal wrote:

san4 wrote:

imortal wrote:

So, what groups are well known for voter drives, especially drives in which homeless people and drug addicts (who hardly seem be people closely interested in political affairs) are registered to vote, and what party are they most commonly associated with?
Encouraging homeless people and drug addicts to vote is obviously not fraud. This a revealing error in the OP.
Not a revealing error, just a difference of assumptions.

When you see a policital action comittee scouring people who one would not assume to be too connected to the community, filling out voter registration forms for them, and taking them to be turned in, you see someone doing a noble and selfless act to help that person find a voice in the political system.  I see someone trolling for an additional vote to turn in for their candidate.
So you think it's wrong for groups to go out and try to get votes for their candidate?
san4
The Mas
+311|6659|NYC, a place to live
Only a moronic group would engage in organized voter fraud. The numbers of votes are tiny and the money it takes would produce more votes if it were used to help people get to the polls on election day.
KEN-JENNINGS
I am all that is MOD!
+2,973|6603|949

Both parties (Repub and Dem) have voter drives.  It isn't illegal to register voters who are eligible to vote, regardless of their social status (drug addicts, homeless, etc).  The idea that Dems may or may not court those voters more than Republicans is of little relevance to the topic.

Voter fraud (by the general population) by absentee or false representation happens, probably/maybe, sure.  From a general understanding of voter guidelines, anyone can cast a ballot, even if your name is not on the voting rolls- It is called a provisional vote.  It is up to election officials for the respective jurisdictions (city, county, state, federal) to conclude whether or not votes are valid by checking the voter rolls.  Whether or not they do their job completely impacts the amount of false votes.  Your topic (and the articles you quoted) fails to realize this very important step in combatting voter fraud - there is a reason election systems and bureaucracy is in place.

As for electronic voting, there is no electronic voting system that I know of that has veracious antihacking/antimanipulation systems in place to combat the possibility of massive voter fraud - which to me is a much larger concern than double-absentee voting and/or false representation at the polling places.

For what it's worth, every time I have voted the polling place requests valid state ID and/or a copy of a utility bill, and requires a signature.

Last edited by KEN-JENNINGS (2008-10-28 12:52:49)

imortal
Member
+240|6636|Austin, TX

san4 wrote:

imortal wrote:

san4 wrote:


Encouraging homeless people and drug addicts to vote is obviously not fraud. This a revealing error in the OP.
Not a revealing error, just a difference of assumptions.

When you see a policital action comittee scouring people who one would not assume to be too connected to the community, filling out voter registration forms for them, and taking them to be turned in, you see someone doing a noble and selfless act to help that person find a voice in the political system.  I see someone trolling for an additional vote to turn in for their candidate.
So you think it's wrong for groups to go out and try to get votes for their candidate?
To go out and try to convince others to vote hor your candidate is good.  To take their voter registration card and information to cast their vote for them for your candidate is bad.
JoshP
Banned
+176|5660|Notts, UK

imortal wrote:

So, what groups are well known for voter drives, especially drives in which homeless people and drug addicts (who hardly seem be people closely interested in political affairs) are registered to vote, and what party are they most commonly associated with?
if i was homeless or a drug addict i would be extremely interested in politics so that they could solve my problems
san4
The Mas
+311|6659|NYC, a place to live

imortal wrote:

san4 wrote:

imortal wrote:

Not a revealing error, just a difference of assumptions.

When you see a policital action comittee scouring people who one would not assume to be too connected to the community, filling out voter registration forms for them, and taking them to be turned in, you see someone doing a noble and selfless act to help that person find a voice in the political system.  I see someone trolling for an additional vote to turn in for their candidate.
So you think it's wrong for groups to go out and try to get votes for their candidate?
To go out and try to convince others to vote hor your candidate is good.  To take their voter registration card and information to cast their vote for them for your candidate is bad.
I agree that voting in someone else's name is illegal. But what a ridiculous waste of money it would be.

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