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IF YOU HAVE
SENT ME or WOULD LIKE TO SEND ME
COMMENTS OR NEWS TIPS
PLEASE READ THIS FIRST
I read every email sent to me (assuming my spam filter did
not exclude it), but I may or may not respond to each one simply due
to lack of time. Regardless, I do very much appreciate your sending me
feedback or comments or tips. If
you have written to me and have not heard back, it could be because I
either do not have time to respond or because I haven't gotten around
to responding yet because I'm tied up. I will try my best to
respond to emails but I cannot guarantee a response. Apart
from general comments, I am looking for readers from each state
(especially swing states) who can send me information on any voting
irregularities or fraud over the next several weeks. To
contact me, please send email to feedback-at-eriposte-dot-com. NOTES
ON WHAT I DO NOT PLAN TO COVER
(considering the high tensions in Election 2004) A.
I will err on the side of caution where possible, and give benefit of
the doubt to an individual or group UNLESS
- history shows similar behavior in the past or
- an attempt to deceive is apparent
I have to do this because it is easy for anyone to claim voter fraud
when even an honest mistake occurred - especially in an election such as
this one. B.
I do not plan to cover stories on more than one registration submitted
under the same name (unless fraud or deception is clearly proven) since
there are understandable reasons why someone might have multiple registrations
submitted. Additionally, not only are such duplications detectable
by Election Boards, there is no reason to think they are biased towards
Democrats as the articles/snippets below show. For example, see this
story from Kansas:
A suburban St. Louis
Republican committeeman asked the St. Louis County Board of Election
Commissioners to investigate voter registration efforts by nonprofit
groups linked to the Democratic party Tuesday. But the groups said his
petition is merely an attempt to disenfranchise new voters.
Neal Breitweiser, of
the St. Louis suburb of Creve Coeur, submitted a petition with more
than 1,400 signatures calling for the board to investigate
registrations collected by the Missouri Progressive Vote Coalition,
America Coming Together, and MoveOn.org. He said he was acting as a
concerned voter, not as part of the Republican party, but a news
release announcing the petition was on Republican party stationery.
"What the petition
is about is making sure that everyone's vote is counted and that their
vote is not voided by an illegally registered participant," said
Breitweiser.
Breitweiser said he
decided to act after seeing a local television news report that
"hundreds" of voter registrations collected by the voter
organizations were "trashed" because they were found to be
fraudulent.
The election board
said it had not announced anything to that effect and had not been
"trashing" registrations. The county's Republican director
of elections, David Welch, said that out of about 40,000 total
registrations collected since the August primaries, about 9,000 were
duplications. He said that number was not unusual considering that it
was an election year and more people were registering.
Welch said he did
not know if the questioned registrations involved any of the voter
registration groups. He said the county board does not track that
data.
The duplications
didn't necessarily indicate fraud, Welch said. He said there were
legitimate reasons why people might show up twice in the voter rolls -
for example, if a woman who had married or divorced had changed her
name, or if someone re-registered after being unsure of whether their
voter information was updated with a new address.
And one
from Ohio:
Venita
Meridith of Bedford registered twice "just to make sure,"
according to the suit. She never heard from the board until she went
there Oct. 2. A clerk told her that she wasn't registered but to wait a
couple of weeks. She submitted a third form but has not yet heard from
the board.
And
this
one about registrations in Red states:
When researchers
compared the EDS figures with data for eligible voting-age residents
drawn from the 2000 U.S. Census, they determined that in the 2000
presidential election there were more registered voters than
voting-age residents in Alaska and Montana and that 32 states have
at least one county with more registered voters than eligible
voters. This determination led them to the conclusion that
registration rolls in these, and many other counties and states, are
grossly inaccurate.
C.
Note: This
section had a note on ACORN (Association
of Community Organizations for Reform Now) - this has now been removed
and I have actually covered the ACORN case here.
D.
Fake outrage from the RNC using quotes taken out of context from DNC
mails. (See here)
E.
False claims about vote fraud from the RNC (see here
for example):
Republicans
have pointed to what they contend is widespread evidence of fraud in
voter registration. Making the rounds on the Sunday talk shows, for
instance, Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie pointed
out that in Franklin County, the latest Census shows there are more
registered voters than there are age-eligible residents.
But election officials
and other experts say there is a reasonable explanation for bloated
election rolls that has nothing to do with fraud: The National Voter
Registration Act prohibits them from purging voters from the rolls for
four years after an initial notification is sent.
"It's unfortunate that there seems to be an assumption that
there's fraud behind every problem," said Kay Maxwell, president
of the League of Women Voters. "There often is a simple
explanation. And we're very concerned that these challenges will
intimidate people and keep them from voting."
And here:
How does the Republican
National Committee know that attempts
to register dead people in Bernalillo County, N.M., (pop.
581,000) belong under the rubric, "Democratic
Voter Fraud Watch"? The county, which includes Albuquerque, went
for Gore/Lieberman in 2000. That would suggest that it's Republicans
who bear the more plausible motive to cheat this time out. Really,
though, it's impossible to know who's responsible for this monkey
business. Why is the RNC blaming Democrats?
I see two
possibilities. One is that the RNC plans to blame, indiscriminately, every
instance of voter fraud on the Democrats. The other is that the RNC knows
the Democrats did this one because the RNC is directing its own
election-fraud efforts around the country from Washington—no
freelancers, please!—and the Bernalillo County job isn't one of
these.
F.
Voters appearing in voter rolls in 2 or more states - unless
significant fraudulent double-voting is revealed
See this
article for why I have the condition "unless significant
fraudulent double-voting is revealed":
As many as 60,000
voters may be registered to cast ballots in both Carolinas, and
officials aren't checking.
That's one of the flaws
discovered by a Charlotte (N.C.) Observer/WCNC-TV, Channel 6,
investigation of voter-registration records in both states that could
lead to miscounting or even voter fraud.
...
A computer comparison
by the news organizations found more than 60,000 people who appear to
be registered to vote in both states. Officials say they check records
for double registrations, but they don't share data across state
lines.
Alamance County Sheriff
Terry Johnson and other critics say illegal immigrants are registering
to vote using false documents at driver's license offices. N.C.
elections officials say they've found few examples.
North Carolina is
investigating two groups that may have falsely registered new voters,
including a 15-year-old Wake County boy.
Voter fraud is both a
federal and state crime. Election officials say it's rare, but it does
happen.
"We investigate
any allegation," said Don Wright, general counsel to the N.C.
Board of Elections. "That's our job."
He estimated that about
a dozen people have been caught trying to vote in more than one
location in the past four years.
Most of those who are
prosecuted receive probation for a first offense, but it could be
punishable by fines and jail time.
S.C. Elections
Commission Director Marci Andino said officials in her state sometimes
turn irregularities over to law enforcement, but the system basically
relies on trust.
"People are taking
an oath that they haven't voted any place else when they sign that
registry."
Reasons
for duplications
The Observer and WCNC
compared computer records for about 7 million registered voters in
both states.
They found 60,000 or so
people who appear to be cross-registered in both states and up to 180
who were listed as having voted in two places in either the 2000 or
2002 general elections.
Reporters found no one
who admitted to double-voting and discovered plausible explanations
for many of the duplications, including clerical errors.
Army Capt. Charles
Booker, for example, is registered to vote in Fayetteville, N.C.,
where he was stationed at Fort Bragg in 2000, and in Greenville, where
he grew up and first registered in 1996.
Computer records show
that, in 2000, Booker voted in both states.
Reached at his current
post in Fort Bliss, Texas, Booker says he voted only in Fayetteville
that year.
But his father - also
Charles Booker - did vote in Greenville in 2000, the senior Booker
says, although elections records show he did not.
The elder Booker
guesses that he was mistakenly recorded under his son's name when he
cast his ballot.
That could happen,
officials say.
"You're going to
have some poll workers that, when they check off a person, check the
person above or below," said Wright with the N.C. elections
board. "But that is not common."
The news organizations'
computer comparisons matched people based on their first and last
names, middle initials, birth dates, race and sex, as recorded with
the elections boards.
But the comparisons
found that clerical errors may be the cause of at least some of those.
Still, it's clear that
thousands of people are registered to vote - if not voting - in both
states, whether through their own oversight, errors by election
offices or, in some cases, intentionally.
Elections officials say
it would be hard to catch those people double-voting across state
lines because states don't share their voter databases.
"It's the big
loophole in the whole system," Wright said.
A significant number of
states - New York, Pennsylvania, Colorado and Florida - don't even
maintain statewide rolls.
But a new law passed
after the 2000 election, dubbed the Help America Vote Act, requires
all states to create databases by 2006.
And this
one talking about those registered in both Florida and Ohio:
Double
registrations cross party lines: About 11,000 Republicans and 9,600
Democrats are registered in both states.
G.
Voters challenged merely because they lack ID, unless it is proven
they are not citizens
[Note: I do believe that having
some way to identify the eligibility of voters is desirable, but I
think this has to be done without intimidating voters or making
unreasonable demands. An ID sounds good in principle, but as a
practical matter it is more complicated as the article below points
out].
Article
snippet:
A study
done for the National Commission on Federal Election Reform, a
bipartisan group formed after the Florida ballot meltdown of 2000,
found that 5 percent of Americans lack good personal identification.
These Americans tended to be poor, less educated and living in cities.
Here's a snippet from another
article [via reader radtimes]:
Some states are
requiring that voters furnish photo ID in order to vote, a constraint
that is expected to limit voter turnout. This issue has flared
especially in states with high numbers of Native American residents.
"This photo ID requirement was very much a concern of Republicans
on capital hill," Raj Goyle, the Senior Domestic Policy Analyst
at the Center for American Progress stated. He said that the photo ID
requirement disenfranchises certain groups of people, especially poor
people and people of color.
When discussing how the
new photo ID requirement disenfranchises Native American voters, Jesse
Clausen, who has been active in voter registration drives in South
Dakota, told The Progressive: "Indian people living in poverty
might have higher priority on other things than spending $8 to get
their driver's license." Clausen pointed out that many people on
the reservations don't have cars.
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