Real Voter Fraud

joefromchicago wrote:

The substantial lack of any claims of voters attempting to cast fraudulent votes at polling places is a big clue.

Really? I already Linked to one Donavan Riley who was caught red handed. If that isn't enough here is a link to a story of cast ballots outnumber voters by 4,609 in Milwaukee county alone.

joefromchicago wrote:

jpinMilwaukee wrote:
And what is the harm of making it more difficult for people to fraudulently vote? Not many people rob banks but we still have laws on the book against that. I would hope that a national election that helps decide the direction of our country might be considered important enough to have a few procedures in place to ensure the legitimacy of an election.

The harm is in potentially deterring legitimate voters from casting their ballots.

I simply don't buy this. It really wouldn't be that difficult to issue a card during the registration process provided that the person can provide proof of identity and residency... which they already have to do.

joefromchicago wrote:

jpinMilwaukee wrote:
Well... where else is voter fraud taking place if not at the polls where people actually vote?

In courthouses where people register. In living rooms where people vote by absentee ballot. And at polling places where people other than voters (e.g. election officials, vote tabulators, voting machine manufacturers) commit various types of fraud. None of those would be deterred by a law that requires voters to present a state-issued ID at the polling place.

So we should ignore voter fraud taking place at the polls because there is voter fraud in other places as well? Do you have a catch-all solution for all of the various types of voter fraud you have listed above?

A voter data-base that works in conjuction with a voter ID would help eliminate many of the problems you have listed. In order to get the voter ID, you need to prove residency and identity. Once the ID is issued, you can than use that to double check information on the data-base. This would help weed out potential double registrees, provide a system to double check absentee votes against polling place votes, check for duplicates between the different polling places and different states... and the process really wouldn't be all that different from what it is now.

As far as election officials, vote tabulators and voting machine manufacturers fraud... that is a different type of fraud that would require different solutions. As people already suggested, a paper trail is necessary (although I'm thinking that if it is that easy to hack the electronic machines, it probably wouldn't be all that hard to have it print out one thing and tally another).

I never said that ID was a cure-all, but it certainly is a step in the right direction.

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okie wrote:

So you at least agree that fraudulant registrations are a root problem, perhaps more important than the voting?

Fraud by voters at polling places is an insignificant problem, so it follows that any other problem, like fraudulent registrations, would be significantly more important.

okie wrote:

I started this thread, with evidence of significant fraudulant registrations attempted, and I was told by some that it wasn't important because it did not involve actual voting.

Then you should address your arguments to the person or persons who told you that. I didn't.

okie wrote:

P.S. I read your posts.

I want to believe.

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jpinMilwaukee wrote:

joefromchicago wrote:

The substantial lack of any claims of voters attempting to cast fraudulent votes at polling places is a big clue.

Really? I already Linked to one Donavan Riley who was caught red handed. If that isn't enough here is a link to a story of cast ballots outnumber voters by 4,609 in Milwaukee county alone.

For about the fifth time, let me explain: your reference to the Riley story involves a problem with voter registration. A voter ID law would do nothing to deter someone from registering to vote in multiple locations, since the obligation to produce an ID would not disclose the fact that the voter had multiple registrations. As for the Milwaukee County story:

A photo ID requirement might have caught some of the problems highlighted in Tuesday's preliminary report.In other words, of the 4,609 cases of possible vote fraud, only some of them would have been addressed by a voter ID law. The story does not estimate how many would constitute "some."

jpinMilwaukee wrote:

I simply don't buy this. It really wouldn't be that difficult to issue a card during the registration process provided that the person can provide proof of identity and residency... which they already have to do.

The courts, so far, disagree with you.

jpinMilwaukee wrote:

So we should ignore voter fraud taking place at the polls because there is voter fraud in other places as well?

No. But if we are to address a problem, we should make sure that we're not making things worse rather than better.

jpinMilwaukee wrote:

Do you have a catch-all solution for all of the various types of voter fraud you have listed above?

Nope. Crafting solutions for all types of vote fraud goes far beyond the bounds of my competency, and so I will refrain from offering some cockamamie scheme that, in real life, would be either intrusive, unwieldy, or prohibitively expensive.

jpinMilwaukee wrote:

A voter data-base that works in conjuction with a voter ID would help eliminate many of the problems you have listed. In order to get the voter ID, you need to prove residency and identity. Once the ID is issued, you can than use that to double check information on the data-base. This would help weed out potential double registrees, provide a system to double check absentee votes against polling place votes, check for duplicates between the different polling places and different states... and the process really wouldn't be all that different from what it is now.

Sounds like the issuance of the ID is an unnecessary step in there.

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joefromchicago wrote:

As for the Milwaukee County story:
A photo ID requirement might have caught some of the problems highlighted in Tuesday's preliminary report.
In other words, of the 4,609 cases of possible vote fraud, only some of them would have been addressed by a voter ID law. The story does not estimate how many would constitute "some."

Well why don't you tell me what an acceptable number of voter fraud is for you.

joefromchicago wrote:

Sounds like the issuance of the ID is an unnecessary step in there.

Why?

The data base alone would be good for catching duplicate votes but would not keep people from voting for other people. An ID is a quick easy way to check that a person is who they say they are. It could also contain a voter id nuber that could then easily be added to the database once they show up to vote. I'm sure you will just say again that you don't think there is a problem with actual vote fraud of this sort, and I will state, again, that I don't think you can possibly tell how bad it is.

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Here is a transcript of an unaired interview with former U.S. Elections Assistance Commission (EAC) chair Rev. DeForest Soaries. He alledges that leaders in the Congress and WH never intended for there to be reform in our electronic voting system, never gave him funding, or even office space to perform his job.

Quote:

TRANSCRIPT FROM UNAIRED SEPTEMBER 2006 INTERVIEW
Rev. DeForest Soaries, Former U.S. Elections Assistance Commission Chair

"I resigned, effective April 30th, 2005 after having served through the 2004 elections and concluding that neither the White House nor the Congress was really serious about election reform.

"Florida 2000, the whole world watched America express embarrassment over the status of the Election Assistance Administration and by November 2004, we had not only not made significant changes but in many ways, had made things worse through the passage of the Help America Vote Act.

"After Florida 2000, the politicians were all on the soap box promising the country that we would 'repair' the problem and the problem was much more than hanging chads and lever machines. For instance, the Help America Vote Act mandates that an electronic voting machine be in every precinct in the country and that mandate preceded the funding of research necessary to ensure that there is some prototype or standard for such machines. If every home were mandated to have a microwave without the prerequisite kinds of safety standards for microwaves, it would be considered scandalous. But we know more today about how to build a machine to take pictures of rocks on Mars than we know about how to build a machine to safeguard the American right to vote.

"There is no prototype. There are no standards. There is no scientific research that would guarantee any election district that there's a machine that can be used to answer these very serious questions. And so, my sense is that the politicians in Washington have concluded that the system can't be all that bad because, after all, it produced them. And as long as an elected official is an elected official, then whatever machine was used, whatever device was used to elect him or her, seems to be adequate. But there's an erosion of voting rights implicit in our inability to trust the technology that we use and if we were another country being analyzed by America, we would conclude that this country is ripe for stealing elections and for fraud.

"What was ironic that was each of us accepted our appointments knowing that EAC had no statutory authority to regulate. But what we were told was that EAC would have sufficient money to do research. And while regulatory authority was not present, we felt that if we could do the proper research, no state would be caught dead using equipment that didn't meet up to the standards that our research proved were acceptable standards. Well, in the absence of regulatory authority and in the absence of money to do the research, we were basically asked to make bricks without straw.

"Well, the states were forced to comply and they were asking us for guidance. We were ill-equipped to provide guidance. We didn't begin our work until January 2004 and we spent the first three months of our work looking for office space. Here we were, the first federal commission, responsible for implementing federal law in the area of election administration and for the first three months we didn't even have an address. And we physically had to walk around Washington DC looking for office space. This was a travesty. I was basically deceived by the leaders of the House, the Senate and the White House. And I decided that it just made more sense to spend my time watching my sons play basketball than to participate in this charade.

"While we're spending a billion dollars a week in Iraq, we're told at EAC, by both the White House and the Congress, here is how much we're going to give you. You tell us what you're going to do with it. They never asked us the question, what would it really take to lead election reform in this country. How much money should the country really spend not only on buying new equipment, but on doing the proper research before using that equipment and how much will it cost over the long haul to keep that equipment up to date and to repair such equipment. Those questions were not asked. So in my view, it was a just a charade that I would chose not to participate in.

"Most people who really know, like election officials. They pray on election day that the election is not close. Because if an election is not close, then the flaws are hidden. But it's when you have this perfect storm of equipment failures like Florida and a close election where there's a call for recounts and an inability to determine who won right away, that's when the glaring issues emerge and when election officials begin biting their nails.

"Either EAC or some agency must have the capacity to hold the entire system, elections officials, public officials and the manufacturers of voting equipment accountable. Where there's no accountability, then you're open for fraud and for inefficiency. EAC has regulatory authority over the National Voting Rights Act but that's a small piece of the voting process. Someone has got to be able to say, no one in America should use machine 'A' ever again. And if it's not EAC, it's got to be someone. Someone in America has got to hold America accountable for protecting the most fundamental right in a democracy and that is the right to vote."

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=3491

There is no drive to reform the electronic voting system in America, because those who are in office don't wish for it to be reformed. Why?

Cycloptichorn

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jpinMilwaukee wrote:

Well why don't you tell me what an acceptable number of voter fraud is for you.

The number of voter fraud? I have no idea. As with any other social problem, we are typically willing to accept a certain amount of vote fraud, just as we are willing to accept a certain amount of theft, rape, and murder. In general, a problem is acceptable when the solution to the problem becomes a bigger problem that the original problem itself. Thus, we could prevent people from voting in multiple places by restricting travel on election days, but it's unlikely that many people would view that solution as preferable to tolerating a limited amount of fraud.

jpinMilwaukee wrote:

joefromchicago wrote:
Sounds like the issuance of the ID is an unnecessary step in there.

Why?

Because it's not necessary.

jpinMilwaukee wrote:

The data base alone would be good for catching duplicate votes but would not keep people from voting for other people. An ID is a quick easy way to check that a person is who they say they are. It could also contain a voter id nuber that could then easily be added to the database once they show up to vote.

If a system of ID cards, coupled with a national registration database, would deter vote fraud without deterring legitimate voters, and would be a cost-effective method of dealing with the problem of vote fraud, then I think it would be at least worth investigating. For the reasons that I've stated in this thread, however, I am dubious on both counts.

jpinMilwaukee wrote:

I'm sure you will just say again that you don't think there is a problem with actual vote fraud of this sort, and I will state, again, that I don't think you can possibly tell how bad it is.

And neither can you, which is a problem for your argument but not for mine, since I'm not the one relying on the magnitude of the problem in order to advocate change.

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okie wrote:

As fishin points out in his linked article: "Of the 46,000 registered in both states, 68% are Democrats, 12% are Republicans and 16% didn't claim a party."

Irrelevant. The article also says

Quote:

But The News found that between 400 and 1,000 registered voters have voted twice in at least one election...

That is a tiny, tiny percentage of those who registered. With such a small percentage of double registered voters actually voting, we can safely assume it was accidental in almost all cases.

Quote:

It would appear to me that they would not double register unless they intended to double vote....

That is a false and short-sighted assumption. Here is just one example of how a person can register in two states without even realizing it. He registers to vote in New York at the DMV as an afterthought. He doesn't even vote, it's an afterthought. That registration is good for a number of years. He goes down to Florida for a well-paying temporary job, his wife and family remain behind. While down there, he realizes the job is going to last longer than he thought, so he gets a Florida driver's license and registers to vote at the same time, without even thinking that he was still registered in New York.

Voilá! Double registration. And the guy doesn't even think about it.

Things like that are probably most of the problem, as the people who did vote in both states are only 1% or 2% of the people who registered in two states.

Meanwhile, it is worth noting that of the three people the newspaper managed to find who voted in both states, two were Republicans. That speaks volumes.

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As for these national voter registration databases, it looks like it is already law and scheduled for 2008, though whether or when it will become implemented seems to be a different story. It's called Real ID.

USA Today wrote:

An anti-terrorism law creating a national standard for all driver's licenses by 2008 isn't upsetting just civil libertarians and immigration rights activists.
State motor vehicle officials nationwide who will have to carry out the Real ID Act say its authors grossly underestimated its logistical, technological and financial demands.

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joefromchicago wrote:

If a system of ID cards, coupled with a national registration database, would deter vote fraud without deterring legitimate voters, and would be a cost-effective method of dealing with the problem of vote fraud, then I think it would be at least worth investigating.

Baby steps, Joe. I'm happy with that for now.

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kelticwizard wrote:

okie wrote:

As fishin points out in his linked article: "Of the 46,000 registered in both states, 68% are Democrats, 12% are Republicans and 16% didn't claim a party."

Irrelevant. The article also says

Quote:
But The News found that between 400 and 1,000 registered voters have voted twice in at least one election...

That is a tiny, tiny percentage of those who registered. With such a small percentage of double registered voters actually voting, we can safely assume it was accidental in almost all cases.

Weren't we paralyzed over the Florida results for weeks due to a few hundred votes? Now you claim 400 to 1,000 is insignificant.

Quote:

Quote:
It would appear to me that they would not double register unless they intended to double vote....

That is a false and short-sighted assumption. Here is just one example of how a person can register in two states without even realizing it. He registers to vote in New York at the DMV as an afterthought. He doesn't even vote, it's an afterthought. That registration is good for a number of years. He goes down to Florida for a well-paying temporary job, his wife and family remain behind. While down there, he realizes the job is going to last longer than he thought, so he gets a Florida driver's license and registers to vote at the same time, without even thinking that he was still registered in New York.

Voilá! Double registration. And the guy doesn't even think about it.

Things like that are probably most of the problem, as the people who did vote in both states are only 1% or 2% of the people who registered in two states.

Meanwhile, it is worth noting that of the three people the newspaper managed to find who voted in both states, two were Republicans. That speaks volumes.

Hmmm.... I would think people should be smart enough to know where their principal home is, where they should vote, keltic. If you ask somebody where their principle residence is, they would know, and that is where they are supposed to vote either in person or by absentee. Anything else is fraud. And you base your statistics on 3 people, 2 of which are Republicans, so you assert most of the fraudulant voters are Republicans, which as you say is further supported by the fact that people that have two homes are rich because of Bush taxcuts!!!! That is pathetic reasoning, keltic. I think it is clearly another case of media bias, whereas they needed to write a story about the fraud and went out and found 3 people to fit the template of being able to come to their desired conclusion, that is that the fraud was not fraud, and if there was any fraud, it was Republican fraud. Another example of why the mainstream media is a joke.

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joefromchicago wrote:

[If a system of ID cards, coupled with a national registration database, would deter vote fraud without deterring legitimate voters, and would be a cost-effective method of dealing with the problem of vote fraud, then I think it would be at least worth investigating. For the reasons that I've stated in this thread, however, I am dubious on both counts.

As much as I do not like government intrusion, lets face it, we already are kept track of in lots of ways due to social security, income tax, census information, the list goes on. Since I think fraud is on the increase in the U.S., and because I firmly believe fair and accurate elections are extremely important in order to maintain the confidence of the citizenry in its government, I think the time has come for a good I.D. system to make sure elections are fair and accurate.

I agree with your reasoning about registration, so if we can make sure our registration roles are accurate and legitimate, then the actual voting is easier to conduct. We have the technology. Witness the barcoding system of millions of products in our retail system. We have the computers to do it. Each county and state should compare their roles with each other, and nationally, to weed out duplicates and people that are not citizens, are not alive anymore, and so on. Appropriate checks and balances need to be built into it to make sure partisan interests cannot use the process for their benefit. And people that knowingly are trying to commit fraud should be prosecuted more aggressively.

All of this points out one eternal truth. Personal honesty of the utmost importance. As it diminishes in a society, that society pays the price dearly in many different ways. Another example of why morality must trump politics.

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okie wrote:

I think the time has come for a good I.D. system to make sure elections are fair and accurate.
...
We have the technology. Witness the barcoding system of millions of products in our retail system. We have the computers to do it.
...

Well, every foreigner (besides Mexicans and Canadians, I think) has to have a maschine readable* passport ... with all such information on it.

It's nothing new - even not for the USA

*Our normal ID-cards have that since years, but that isn't needed at elections

http://fragen-antworten.metagrid.de/images/personalausweis.jpg

Since these data are easily to be found on the web as well, here's the back of mine (in 75%)

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<squint>

You're only 124 cm tall, Walter? That would be what, 4 ft?

<scratches head>

And that can be found on the web as well!?

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old europe wrote:

<squint>

You're only 124 cm tall, Walter? That would be what, 4 ft?

<scratches head>

And that can be found on the web as well!?

174

(Glad, my BMI isn't included as well)

No, that info isn't on the web - a new, free give-away here.

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Emails Detail RNC Voter Suppression in Five States
Exclusive: Emails Detail RNC Voter Suppression in Five States
By Jason Leopold and Matt Renner
t r u t h o u t | Report
Thursday 26 July 2007

Truthout has obtained previously undisclosed GOP campaign emails from the 2004 presidential race that reveal and detail strategies to disenfranchise voters in crucial swing states.

Previously undisclosed documents detail how Republican operatives, with the knowledge of several White House officials, engaged in an illegal, racially-motivated effort to suppress tens of thousands of votes during the 2004 presidential campaign in a state where George W. Bush was trailing his Democratic challenger, Senator John Kerry.

The documents also contain details describing how Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign officials, and at least one individual who worked for White House political adviser Karl Rove, planned to stop minorities residing in Cuyahoga County from voting on election day.

The efforts to purge voters from registration rolls was spearheaded by Tim Griffin, a former Republican National Committee opposition researcher. Griffin recently resigned from his post as interim US attorney for Little Rock Arkansas. His predecessor, Bud Cummins, was forced out to make way for Griffin.

Another set of documents, 43 pages of emails, provided to Truthout by the PBS news program "NOW," contains blueprints for a massive effort undertaken by RNC operatives in 2004, to challenge the eligibility of voters expected to support Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry in states such as Nevada, New Mexico, Florida and Pennsylvania.

One email, dated September 30, 2004, and sent to a dozen or so staffers on the Bush-Cheney campaign and the RNC, under the subject line "voter fraud strategy conference call," describes how campaign staffers planned to challenge the veracity of votes in a handful of battleground states in the event of a Democratic victory.

Furthermore, the emails show the Bush-Cheney campaign and RNC staffers compiled voter-challenge lists that targeted probable Democratic voters in at least five states: New Mexico, Ohio, Florida, Nevada and Pennsylvania. Voting rights lawyers have made allegations of so called "vote caging," against Republicans previously. These emails provide more evidence. One Republican operative involved in the planning wrote "we can do this in NV, FL, PA and NM because we have a list to run against the Absentee Ballot requests, and should."

Vote caging is an illegal tactic to suppress minorities from voting by having their names purged from voter rolls when they fail to respond to registered mail sent to their homes. The Republican National Committee signed a consent decree in 1986 stating they would not engage in the practice after they were caught suppressing votes in 1981 and 1986.

In a letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island) and Edward Kennedy (D-Massachusetts) said "[c]aging is a reprehensible voter suppression tactic, and it may also violate federal law and the terms of applicable judicially enforceable consent decrees." Senators Rockefeller (D-West Virginia) and Whitehouse have called for a Justice Department probe into the practice.

One of the individuals connected to the White House who was the recipient of dozens of emails discussing the strategy to suppress votes was Coddy Johnson, the national field director of Bush's 2004 campaign and former associate director of political affairs, working under Karl Rove. Johnson's father was Bush's college roommate at Yale. Another person who was asked to participate in the so-called "voter fraud strategy" conference call was Jennifer Millerwise, a former deputy communications director for the Bush-Cheney 2004 re-election campaign and a former spokesperson for Vice President Cheney. Millerwise was interviewed by Patrick Fitzgerald during the federal investigation into the leak of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson.

Other participants for the conference call included Mark "Thor" Hearne. Hearne is closely aligned with Karl Rove and the RNC and has been accused of pushing for the firings of some US attorneys by at least one of the fired attorneys. Some of the attorneys believe they were fired based on their refusal to prosecute alleged cases of voter fraud.

Emails among Ohio Republican Party official Michael Magan, Coddy Johnson, then national field director of the Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign, and Timothy Griffin, reveal the men were given documents that could be used as evidence to justify widespread voter challenges if the Bush campaign needed to contest the election results. Johnson referred to the documents as a "goldmine".

The valuable documents were lists of registered voters who did not return address confirmation forms to the Ohio Board of Elections. The Republican operatives compared this list with lists of voters who requested absentee ballots. In the opinion of one of the strategists, the fact that many names appeared on both lists was evidence of voter fraud. "A bad registration card can be an accident or fraud. A bad card AND an Absentee Ballot request is a clear case of fraud," according to former Bush-Cheney campaign staffer Robert Paduchik.

Another Republican operative saw the value of the Ohio list from a media strategy perspective. According to the emails, Christopher McInerney, a RNC researcher said "... I have already tasked our IT [information technology] person with creating a match list between the Board of Elections return mail list and the Absentee Ballot request list. Jack [Christopher] thought this would be a good idea to have - to reference as part of the larger DenHerder press strategy." It is not known what the "DenHerder press strategy" refers to, but Dave DenHerder served as regional political director for the 2004 Bush campaign.

McInerney's email continues, "I can't speak to other states, but if they don't have flagged voter rolls, we run the risk of having GOP fingerprints."

Strategist Christopher Guith responded by saying "I would think we are less worried about "fingerprints" if we have decent evidence that fraudulent ballots are being cast. I think the intent is to take the Board of Elections' list and challenge absentee ballots? At that point, isn't it more important to stop absentee ballots that we have a high certainty of fraud than avoid the hit?"

McInerney's and Guith's emails have been previously disclosed.

Griffin responded, "I guess we have to make sure we have bodies. It seems like it always comes down to bodies. Why don't you ask your peeps in each state at issue if they have the resources to do this. Then, I might/can put some resources in the states that are lacking."

The emails seem to show the Republican operatives were preparing for a confrontation reminiscent of the Florida recount affair that followed the 2000 Presidential election. This exchange took place less than one month prior to the November 2004 election.

The list of questionable voters that was compiled by the Ohio Board of Elections was quite similar to the vote caging lists used by the Republican campaigners. The Board of Elections sent out voter confirmation letters to targeted registered voters. The letters required the voter to return a confirmation request or have their name removed from the voter rolls. Because the confirmation letter gave the voter 60 days to respond, a voter who failed to respond to the confirmation request would still be on the voter rolls for the primary election, but would be purged prior to the general election.

The list was apparently checked by two people identified only as "Ted" and "Evan who" made handwritten notes in one of the columns. According to their notes, they described certain parts of Cleveland where low-income and minority voters were targeted as containing "mixed use buildings" and "single family apartments." Another section said, "looks like a parking lot ... doesn't look residential."

In an interview with Truthout in May, David Iglesias, the former US attorney for New Mexico, said Pat Rogers, one of Hearne's colleagues, alleged there was widespread voter fraud in New Mexico and pressured Iglesias to bring criminal charges against some individuals. Iglesias said he had investigated those allegations tirelessly and found zero evidence to back it up. He added that, based on evidence that had surfaced thus far and "Karl Rove's obsession with voter fraud issues throughout the country," he now believes GOP operatives had wanted him to go after Democratic-funded organizations in an attempt to swing the 2006 midterm elections to Republicans.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jason Leopold is a former Los Angeles bureau chief for Dow Jones Newswire. He has written over 2,000 stories on the California energy crisis and received the Dow Jones Journalist of the Year Award in 2001 for his coverage on the issue as well as a Project Censored award in 2004. Leopold also reported extensively on Enron's downfall and was the first journalist to land an interview with former Enron president Jeffrey Skilling following Enron's bankruptcy filing in December 2001. Leopold has appeared on CNBC and National Public Radio as an expert on energy policy and has also been the keynote speaker at more than two dozen energy industry conferences around the country.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Matt Renner is a reporter for Truthout.

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Emails Detail RNC Voter Suppression in Five States
Editor's Note: A full examination of this issue will be the topic for this week's program, "Voter Caging" on "NOW" airing Friday, July 27 on PBS (Check local listings at http://www.pbs.org/now/sched.html.). TO/vh

Also see:
Truthout's interview with former US attorney for New Mexico David Iglesias

View exhibit three here.
View exhibit sixteen here.
View RNC emails here.

Exclusive | Emails Detail RNC Voter Suppression in Five States
By Jason Leopold and Matt Renner
t r u t h o u t | Report

Thursday 26 July 2007

Truthout has obtained previously undisclosed GOP campaign emails from the 2004 presidential race that reveal and detail strategies to disenfranchise voters in crucial swing states.
(Photo: Truthout)

Previously undisclosed documents detail how Republican operatives, with the knowledge of several White House officials, engaged in an illegal, racially-motivated effort to suppress tens of thousands of votes during the 2004 presidential campaign in a state where George W. Bush was trailing his Democratic challenger, Senator John Kerry.

The documents also contain details describing how Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign officials, and at least one individual who worked for White House political adviser Karl Rove, planned to stop minorities residing in Cuyahoga County from voting on election day.

The efforts to purge voters from registration rolls was spearheaded by Tim Griffin, a former Republican National Committee opposition researcher. Griffin recently resigned from his post as interim US attorney for Little Rock Arkansas. His predecessor, Bud Cummins, was forced out to make way for Griffin.

Another set of documents, 43 pages of emails, provided to Truthout by the PBS news program "NOW," contains blueprints for a massive effort undertaken by RNC operatives in 2004, to challenge the eligibility of voters expected to support Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry in states such as Nevada, New Mexico, Florida and Pennsylvania.

One email, dated September 30, 2004, and sent to a dozen or so staffers on the Bush-Cheney campaign and the RNC, under the subject line "voter reg fraud strategy conference call," describes how campaign staffers planned to challenge the veracity of votes in a handful of battleground states in the event of a Democratic victory.

Furthermore, the emails show the Bush-Cheney campaign and RNC staffers compiled voter-challenge lists that targeted probable Democratic voters in at least five states: New Mexico, Ohio, Florida, Nevada and Pennsylvania. Voting rights lawyers have made allegations of so called "vote caging," against Republicans previously. These emails provide more evidence. One Republican operative involved in the planning wrote "we can do this in NV, FL, PA and NM because we have a list to run against the Absentee Ballot requests, and should."

Vote caging is an illegal tactic to suppress minorities from voting by having their names purged from voter rolls when they fail to respond to registered mail sent to their homes. The Republican National Committee signed a consent decree in 1986 stating they would not engage in the practice after they were caught suppressing votes in 1981 and 1986.

In a letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island) and Edward Kennedy (D-Massachusetts) said "[c]aging is a reprehensible voter suppression tactic, and it may also violate federal law and the terms of applicable judicially enforceable consent decrees." Senators Rockefeller (D-West Virginia) and Whitehouse have called for a Justice Department probe into the practice.

One of the individuals connected to the White House who was the recipient of dozens of emails discussing the strategy to suppress votes was Coddy Johnson, the national field director of Bush's 2004 campaign and former associate director of political affairs, working under Karl Rove. Johnson's father was Bush's college roommate at Yale. Another person who was asked to participate in the so-called "voter reg fraud strategy" conference call was Jennifer Millerwise, a former deputy communications director for the Bush-Cheney 2004 re-election campaign and a former spokesperson for Vice President Cheney. Millerwise was interviewed by Patrick Fitzgerald during the federal investigation into the leak of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson.

Other participants for the conference call included Mark "Thor" Hearne. Hearne is closely aligned with Karl Rove and the RNC and has been accused of pushing for the firings of some US attorneys by at least one of the fired attorneys. Some of the attorneys believe they were fired based on their refusal to prosecute alleged cases of voter fraud.

Emails among Ohio Republican Party official Michael Magan, Coddy Johnson, then national field director of the Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign, and Timothy Griffin, reveal the men were given documents that could be used as evidence to justify widespread voter challenges if the Bush campaign needed to contest the election results. Johnson referred to the documents as a "goldmine".

The valuable documents were lists of registered voters who did not return address confirmation forms to the Ohio Board of Elections. The Republican operatives compared this list with lists of voters who requested absentee ballots. In the opinion of one of the strategists, the fact that many names appeared on both lists was evidence of voter fraud. "A bad registration card can be an accident or fraud. A bad card AND an Absentee Ballot request is a clear case of fraud," according to former Bush-Cheney campaign staffer Robert Paduchik.

Another Republican operative saw the value of the Ohio list from a media strategy perspective. According to the emails, Christopher McInerney, a RNC researcher said "... I have already tasked our IT [information technology] person with creating a match list between the Board of Elections return mail list and the Absentee Ballot request list. Jack [Christopher] thought this would be a good idea to have - to reference as part of the larger DenHerder press strategy." It is not known what the "DenHerder press strategy" refers to, but Dave DenHerder served as regional political director for the 2004 Bush campaign.

McInerney's email continues, "I can't speak to other states, but if they don't have flagged voter rolls, we run the risk of having GOP fingerprints."

Strategist Christopher Guith responded by saying "I would think we are less worried about "fingerprints" if we have decent evidence that fraudulent ballots are being cast. I think the intent is to take the Board of Elections' list and challenge absentee ballots? At that point, isn't it more important to stop absentee ballots that we have a high certainty of fraud than avoid the hit?"

McInerney's and Guith's emails have been previously disclosed.

Griffin responded, "I guess we have to make sure we have bodies. It seems like it always comes down to bodies. Why don't you ask your peeps in each state at issue if they have the resources to do this. Then, I might/can put some resources in the states that are lacking."

The emails seem to show the Republican operatives were preparing for a confrontation reminiscent of the Florida recount affair that followed the 2000 Presidential election. This exchange took place less than one month prior to the November 2004 election.

The list of questionable voters that was compiled by the Ohio Board of Elections was quite similar to the vote caging lists used by the Republican campaigners. The Board of Elections sent out voter confirmation letters to targeted registered voters. The letters required the voter to return a confirmation request or have their name removed from the voter rolls. Because the confirmation letter gave the voter 60 days to respond, a voter who failed to respond to the confirmation request would still be on the voter rolls for the primary election, but would be purged prior to the general election.

The list was apparently checked by two people identified only as "Ted" and "Evan who" made handwritten notes in one of the columns. According to their notes, they described certain parts of Cleveland where low-income and minority voters were targeted as containing "mixed use buildings" and "single family apartments." Another section said, "looks like a parking lot ... doesn't look residential."

In an interview with Truthout in May, David Iglesias, the former US attorney for New Mexico, said Pat Rogers, one of Hearne's colleagues, alleged there was widespread voter fraud in New Mexico and pressured Iglesias to bring criminal charges against some individuals. Iglesias said he had investigated those allegations tirelessly and found zero evidence to back it up. He added that, based on evidence that had surfaced thus far and "Karl Rove's obsession with voter fraud issues throughout the country," he now believes GOP operatives had wanted him to go after Democratic-funded organizations in an attempt to swing the 2006 midterm elections to Republicans.
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Jason Leopold is a former Los Angeles bureau chief for Dow Jones Newswire. He has written over 2,000 stories on the California energy crisis and received the Dow Jones Journalist of the Year Award in 2001 for his coverage on the issue as well as a Project Censored award in 2004. Leopold also reported extensively on Enron's downfall and was the first journalist to land an interview with former Enron president Jeffrey Skilling following Enron's bankruptcy filing in December 2001. Leopold has appeared on CNBC and National Public Radio as an expert on energy policy and has also been the keynote speaker at more than two dozen energy industry conferences around the country.
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Matt Renner is a reporter for Truthout.

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A mathematician may have uncovered widespread election fraud, and Kansas is trying to silence her

8/5/15 2:21pm by Jon Green 292

http://americablog.com/2015/08/mathematician-actual-voter-fraud-kansas-republicans.html

Kansas loves them some voter fraud hysteria. From going to the Supreme Court to try and make doubly-sure that non-citizens can’t vote in their elections to setting up a voter fraud website where citizens can report every kind of voter fraud except the kinds that have actually happened in the state, Kansas is on the forefront of voter fraud readiness and protection.

Except, perhaps, when it comes to the machines they use to record their votes.

According to the Wichita Eagle, Wichita State mathematician Beth Clarkson has found irregularities in election returns from Sedgwick County, along with other counties throughout the United States, but has faced stiff opposition from the state in trying to confirm whether the irregularities are fraud or other, less-nefarious anomalies.

Analyzing election returns at a precinct level, Clarkson found that candidate support was correlated, to a statistically significant degree, with the size of the precinct. In Republican primaries, the bias has been toward the establishment candidates over tea partiers. In general elections, it has favored Republican candidates over Democrats, even when the demographics of the precincts in question suggested that the opposite should have been true.

Clarkson’s interest in election returns was piqued by a 2012 paper released by analysts Francois Choquette and James Johnson showing the same pattern of election returns, which favor establishment Republican candidates in primaries and general elections. The irregularities are isolated to precincts that use “Central Tabulator” voting machines — machines that have previously been shown to be vulnerable to hacking. The effects are significant and widespread: According to their analysis, Mitt Romney could have received over a million extra votes in the 2012 Republican primary, mostly coming at the expense of Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich. President Obama also ceded significant votes to John McCain due to this irregularity, as well.

You can read the paper in full here.
Voting machine, via Wikimedia Commons

Voting machine, via Wikimedia Commons

While Clarkson has found the same statistical irregularity in a number of localities, her efforts to confirm whether they amount to fraud have been centered on Sedgwick County, Kansas, due to the locality’s use of Real Time Voting Machine Paper Tapes, which provide a paper trail that other localities don’t have. However, her efforts to verify Sedgwick County’s election returns have been repeatedly shut down.

She first requested a recount of the 2013 election, but the timeframe in which a recount could have been requested had passed. She then requested the machines’ computer records from the Sedgwick County registrar, which told her to kindly shove off and sue Secretary of State Kris Kobach if she wanted the records so badly.

When Clarkson initially filed her lawsuit requesting the paper records from the voting machines, her suit was denied because a judge ruled that the paper records constituted ballots, shielding them from the state’s open records law. This ruling is suspect at best, given that the paper records do not have voters’ names assigned to them; they only record when and how a ballot was cast for recount purposes.

She then sought a court order giving her access to a sample of voting records in order to check voting machines’ error rates. This order was ignored by the Secretary of State’s office, despite their being legally required to respond to her within 30 days. The office later said that they didn’t realize they had received her request.

Given Kansas’s professed diehard commitment to combatting election fraud, one would think that they would be all for analysis into whether the integrity of their elections have been compromised. Apparently you’d be wrong.

(h/t Occupy Democrats)

Correction: The original title of this post referred to the bias in election returns as “voter fraud.” As the allegation of fraud is not against individual voters, but rather administrators of elections, “election fraud” is correct. This change has been made where appropriate.
Tags: ballot access, election fraud, Elections, Kansas, voter fraud
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Jon Green
Jon Green graduated from Kenyon College with a B.A. in Political Science and high honors in Political Cognition. He worked as a field organizer for Congressman Tom Perriello in 2010 and a Regional Field Director for President Obama's re-election campaign in 2012. Jon writes on a number of topics, but pays especially close attention to elections, religion and political cognition. Follow him on Twitter at @_Jon_Green, and on Google+. Article archive.

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@okie,

Read it again Okie. It said the republican company ACORN hired to do the registration were the ones who turned in fraudulent registrations.

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Real Voter Fraud

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