Voter Fraud is a Fraud: The Fix Is In

So up in Pennsylvania and in other republican controlled state houses they are doing their best to make it tough to vote. They have passed stringent laws requiring a state issued voter ID to be presented before a ballot can be cast. They are doing so in the name of preventing in person voter fraud which they seem to believe is an overwhelming problem. Well that is what they are saying publicly anyway.

An outfit called News 21 is working on this and has been compiling all sorts of figures
on a national scale. The conclusion reached by their research is that there isn't any evidence of an in person voter fraud conspiracy. In fact there isn't even any evidence that wide spread in person voter fraud exists at all.

News 21 quotes David Schultz, a Professor of public policy at Hamline School of Business in St. Paul, Minnesota as saying, "Voter fraud at the polls is an insignificant aspect of American elections." He goes on to say, "There is absolutely no evidence that voter in person fraud has affected the out come of any election in the United States."

The Republican National Lawyer Association claims to have identified 375 cases of voter fraud cases. That wouldn't be in some New York City precinct, or East Los Angeles barrio, or even in the wilds of Edmond, Oklahoma. That would be nation wide. Of those cases, News 21 found only 77 of those cases were actual alleged fraud by voters.

In fact News 21 found the most frequent cases of fraud occurred with registration and absentee ballots, which voter ID's could not have prevented in the first place.

So what is all the buzz? Why this sudden rush to make sure we solve a problem that doesn't actually exist?

Well here is what Pennsylvania house majority leader, Mike Turzai, a republican, had to say about that to a gathering of fellow travelers. He gushed about the new law and its immediate effect, "which is going to allow Governor Romney to win Pennsylvania."

Now we're to the nut of it. Don't let the fuckers who will vote for Obama into the booths. News 21 through NBC News is reporting that with less than two months to go before the election 785,000 people, or roughly 9% of Pennsylvania voters don't have the IDs that will be required at the polls. The majority of them are lower income workers, minorities, and senior citizens.

In other words the fix is in.

The ACLU is suing Pennsylvania over all this and the feds are questioning other voter ID laws. In Harrisburg the state Attorney General could not identify any recent cases of in person voter fraud to the media. In fact the last known case was in 2000. In addition the state of Pennsylvania is apparently not ready to offer any evidence that in person voter fraud will occur in November without the IDs.

This is starting to look like a back door putsch engineered by a desperate and ruthless gang of brutes. They are making the American election process look less reliable than ones in say Venezuela, or Zimbabwe.

Every now and then I start to think I can put up with these right wing clods, but then they always show themselves to be utterly opposed to democracy. Quite honestly this is a throw back to the Jim Crow laws that required you to prove that your grandfather once voted in order for you to receive a ballot.

They dishonor the country, the Constitution, and themselves. They are, quite simply, a disgrace to everything that is American. Unfortunately that has never stopped them and apparently it never will.

8-14-12