"During the past seven years of the Bush Administration, Republican officials have continuously claimed that there has been massive voter fraud...

Really? Maybe I missed these statements. The NYT article to which you link has none. Do you have any examples of the Bush Administration claiming "massive voter fraud?"

Sounds like a straw man to me.

The NYT spin is that the thousands of illegal votes which its reporter admits were cast in recent elections are simply "mistakes and lapses" because the reporter cannot find examples outright voter fraud.

Hell, I googled for just 10 minutes and found multiple examples of media reports of probable voter fraud in Tennessee, Wisconsin, and several other battleground states as well as federal indictments across the country and convictions and state convictions including those in my home state of Colorado.

If the crack reporters at the NYT wanted to find dozens of additional media reports of voter fraud, all they needed to do was run a quick search on Nexis. Of course, that assumes that the DNC party paper wanted to find examples of Dem voter fraud.

The great irony of all this is that there was a systematic and successful attempt at electoral fraud, this one an effort to keep eligible voters from casting ballots. It was staged by the Republican Party in Florida in 2000 in violation of the federal Voting Rights Act.

I see the NYT has no trouble at all falsely alleging voter fraud when it suits their needs, but even the NYT article to which your passage linked did not allege that this "voter fraud" was perpetrated by the GOP as you claim in your link.

This linked AP story printed in the NYT concerned a complaint and settlement concerning 2000 voting procedures implemented in the Democrat majority Florida county of Leon by Democrat Supervisor of Elections, Ian Sancho, who led Gary Hart's campaign in Leon County back in 1984. (I went to law school and practiced there for a few years and know Leon County well).

There was no allegation in the text of the article that the Democrat elected (not GOP) electoral officials in Leon County committed any voter fraud, which is the introduction of illegal votes. As with many NYT articles, the title is an outright lie.

Professor, I am sure you would appreciate the opportunity to correct your post and acknowledge that you made an error in alleging GOP voter fraud in Florida in 2000. If not, you may want to present some actual evidence of a GOP conspiracy to count illegal votes in the 2000 Florida election.
 

Bart, the claims were not that Florida election officials counted illegal votes in Florida, but that they used purges of voter rolls and other tactics to impede voting by minorities who had every right to vote. These techniques were the point of the Voting Rights Act lawsuits against Florida officials which were ultimately settled out of court; they were also documented in the U.S. Civil Rights Commission report that followed the 2000 election.
 

Bart DePalma wrote: Really? Maybe I missed these statements. The NYT article to which you link has none. Do you have any examples of the Bush Administration claiming "massive voter fraud?"

Here is an excerpt from a speech given by Karl Rove on April 7, 2006: We have, as you know, an enormous and growing problem with elections in certain parts of America today. We are, in some parts of the country, I'm afraid to say, beginning to look like we have elections like those run in countries where they guys in charge are, you know, colonels in mirrored sunglasses.

Rove thanks Republican lawyers for their work on 'clean elections' from Raw Story. See also the NY Times Article Panel Said to Alter Finding on Voter Fraud.
 

Professor Balkin:

To start, I hardly credit the CRC report drafted by Carter Appointee and Clinton reappointee Mary Frances Berry, voter removed California Supreme Court justice Cruz Reynoso, Clinton campaign operative Christopher Edley, Jr, former Dem legislator Yvonne Y. Lee, Tom Dachle appointee Elsie Meeks, and Clinton appointee Victoria Wilson which claims to rule on the legality of the victory of George Bush in Florida. This is the equivalent of having Karl Rove and his team determining the legality of the Dem victory in 2006.

Even with that enormous caveat, the anecdotal evidence in that report comes from the Democrat run Leon, Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties.

Once again, I see no proof of a conspiracy by the Republican party to commit voter fraud by submitting illegal votes or voter suppression by chasing away voters. Rather, the allegations of adding illegal votes and voter suppression appear in Democrat counties of Florida.

Given this glass house of their own construction, Dems are hardly in a position to be casting voter fraud stones at my party.
 

QuiteAlarmed said...

Bart DePalma wrote: Really? Maybe I missed these statements. The NYT article to which you link has none. Do you have any examples of the Bush Administration claiming "massive voter fraud?"

Here is an excerpt from a speech given by Karl Rove on April 7, 2006: We have, as you know, an enormous and growing problem with elections in certain parts of America today.

Even the NYT admitted that thousands are illegally voting in elections. This represents an "enormous problem" in an era when elections are decided by razor thin margins.

What this comment does not say, though is that there is massive voter fraud. That is a completely different issue.
 

Bart,

I think one part of the problem is over the use of "fraud." It seems that different people use it different ways, and it seems to take a peculiar meaning in the context of voting.
 

More thoughts,

The most damning thing to Professor Balkin's claim of Republican fraud is contained in the truthout article itself. Much of the relief is centered on what the "counties" in particular Leon county will do. Now, surely the state can do more to address voting problems, but many (most?) of the problems occurred at the county level. And you know what? Guess who controlled all (if not most) of those counties. Democracts.

Hmm, it must really be an evil conspiracy then, if Dems were used to commit fraud against their own political kind.
 

Someone said...

Bart, I think one part of the problem is over the use of "fraud." It seems that different people use it different ways, and it seems to take a peculiar meaning in the context of voting.

I agree. Indeed, I am surprised that Dems would use that term given that nearly all allegations of genuine voter fraud involve Dems.

I would think that the Dems might want to use the spin currently being applied to illegal immigrants. Dems ought to say that their illegal voters are simply "undocumented."

;^)
 

I highly recommend Hilzoy's post at Obsidian Wings.

She points out that if the point is to encourage lawful voting and discourage fraudulent voting, this inevitably involves a balancing act. Like it or not, very stringent laws to prevent voter fraud will interfere with legitimate voters. And laws to facilitate legitimate voting will let some people improperly.

Similar balancing acts occur in any number of other public policy decisions.
 

EL,

Thanks for the link. She does make some good points.
 

"Just the facts, ma'am, just the facts."

"Bart" DePalma shows us what his idea of scholarship is:

The NYT spin is that the thousands of illegal votes which its reporter admits were cast in recent elections are simply "mistakes and lapses" because the reporter cannot find examples outright voter fraud.

Hell, I googled for just 10 minutes and found multiple examples of media reports of probable voter fraud in Tennessee, Wisconsin, and several other battleground states as well as federal indictments across the country and convictions and state convictions including those in my home state of Colorado.

The two "indictments" "across the country" refer NAICT to a single incident of four workers for ACORN who were fired and prosecuted with the approval of ACORN.

The Tennessee article refered to the number (percentage) of provisional ballots accepted of those cast. No illegal ballots counted there at all (and no information on why the ones rejected were rejected). This is the system working as it should.

Wisconsin is a Republican party challenge to voters on the voter rolls that may not be legit, but not an indication they really are invalid (some or even most may have just been clerical/transcription errors) and no indication of illegal voting.

"Bart"'s "battleground states" link is to a screed by some group that has an aversion to ACORN, who the Republicans really don't like, because Republicans don't like voters.

"Bart"'s "convictions" link is to a list of the prosecutions and convictions for illegal voting (or other crimes and/or illegal immigration matters). Once again, this is an indication that the system is working, not the opposite. And the paucty of numbers holds up the N.Y. Times article.

More importantly, most of "Bart"'s links don't show "fraud", and certainly not any concerted effort at such.

From the N.Y. Times article itself:

"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.

A handful of convictions involved people who voted twice. More than 30 were linked to small vote-buying schemes in which candidates generally in sheriff’s or judge’s races paid voters for their support."

It seems error and ignorance, rather than malice, were most responsible. And that may account for the large number of acquittals. And error, even if "criminal" in some states as malum prohibitum.

Regardless, the solution is what is apparent from the present situation: If someone does in fact illegally vote, prosecute them. There is no "crisis", no matter what Rove and the RNC Mighty Wurlitzer is blaring to the rubes.

I see that Hilzoy over at Obsidian Wings concurs with what I said previously in a previous post (see also elsewhere in that thread): Better ten illegal votes than one person be denied his legitimate right to vote. As I put it; the right to vote lies with the people, not with any candidate they cast their votes for.

Cheers,
 

I understand the temptation, but I strongly recommend we not continue to feed the trolls here. There appear to be just two. I wager that if we all make it a point to ignore them, they'll go away.

The best solution remains strategic deletion for a while until they tire, but that requires administration time that probably isn't worth the effort.

On-topic, voter fraud actually exists. However, it does not exist in the way Mr. Rove likes to claim. A simple application of Occam's razor should suffice: mobilizing and training squadrons of multiply registered voters is labor-intensive, ineffective and really, really easy to detect and prosecute. Classic and effective voter fraud, by contrast, must be efficient and must be run by very few, so it can be kept secret or at least plausibly denied. The closest to the Rove-hypothesis fraud of which I know is absentee voter fraud, which at times (indeed in Florida, famously) has been a problem. There is a rogue's gallery of real cheats out there, and neither party has a monopoly on them.

Mr. Rove has prevented precisely none of them from happening again.
 

wcw:

I wager that if we all make it a point to ignore them, they'll go away.br/>
You'd wager wrong. "Bart" kept up his horsesh*t for a year over at Greenwald's blog, regardless of approach, until he decide to call Glenn a liatr and Glenn finally and reluctantly banned him.

I won't let "Bart"'s meadow wafers go unchallenged. He, OTOH, eventually walks away from any thread where he's losing (sadly enough, only to restart the same cow patooties on a new thread a couple weeks later as if no one has said anything).

Cheers,

# posted by  Arne Langsetmo : 1:08 AM