George Rebane
Let me start by inviting our progressive pals to post links to reports of rightwing instigated voter fraud because nationwide the left is off and running. The latest comes from Las Vegas where the unions are stuffing ballot boxes, voting for the old and infirm, and hauling their own members off their jobs to cast supervised votes. Meanwhile legions of loyal lefties surround polling places (at minimum distances?) to do some last minute campaigning.
SEIU and ACORN (renamed) are prominent in the ‘vote early and often’ efforts. And one candidate running for the state senate was told that he couldn’t vote because he had already voted – that was news to him. More here.
But the interesting part is the Left’s continued denial that any voter fraud is taking place by citing the dearth of successful court cases dealing with voter fraud. Most readers know that bringing an obvious voter fraud case to court is difficult and expensive. And if you make it, the Left’s justice system will seek to prosecute you as likely as the fraudsters. Besides, why should an individual care, voting is a commons, and no one feels personally aggrieved – the pain is diluted over all of us. We all recall the Black Panther squad during the last election threatening with clubs all whites who dared to approach a polling place frequented by blacks. The whole thing was caught on video, and our Sec 8 Attorney General threw the case out.
To demonstrate voter fraud from the Right, we hear the Left cite the requirements for voter ID as a return to the Jim Crow days. To prove your bona fides as a legitimate voter is intimidation and fraud to the mind of progressives. And citizens going to observe polling places and vote counting, as provided for by law, are accused of somehow intimidating only those voting for Democratic candidates and causes. Go figure.
Unions have no problem telling their members how to vote. But woe be it to any employer who informs their employees what on the ballot is in the best interest of their jobs. The Left considers that intimidation, while the Right considers that a responsibility (duty?) that the employer should fulfill. As a worker with a brain, you would want to know what your company/boss recommends. Because we all vote through a secret ballot, there is only upside in receiving that kind of information.
The same charges are brought in the media against organizations (mostly conservative) that want to check the voter rolls for the dear departed and the long gone. That again is somehow only supposed to deny the Left their vote count, and in that they happen to be right. Locally the Tea Party is sending its members to observe the voting processes and to reinforce the ‘voter integrity project’. For this it is pilloried by every lefty with online access.
On the obverse, we know the advice that the unions have given their members has caused massive amounts of unfunded liabilities and debt to be laid on to thousands of government jurisdictions, and in the private sector the transfer of jobs overseas due to the cost of labor here. To understand this insanity, we all have to remember that the Left considers profit a dirty word whose garner demonstrates greed and serves no benefit to society. Jobs should be created solely as an excuse to pay those who often can do little more than fog a mirror. Governments at all levels have hired ‘those who can’t’ by the hundreds of thousands. And come election time, that itself is a systemic kind of voter fraud that goes totally unnoticed.
[Addendum] Locally, I wonder what a complete count in Nevada County will reveal. Barry Pruett has done a sampling of the oldest cohort of our voters and reports on it here, and The Union’s 1nov12 edition has also written an article (paywalled) on voter rolls that cites Pruett’s work. Using his sample of 400 oldest people on the county’s voter rolls, Pruett found 31 or a rate of 7.75% of those registered voters had died during the last 10 years. And apparently two of them had cast post-mortem ballots. From this experience Pruett concluded that “we have potentially hundreds of deceased individuals on our voter rolls locally, and thousands of deceased individuals on our voter rolls statewide.”
[2nov12 update] Like clockwork, the Left’s spokesmen from coast to coast arise to pooh-pooh any concern about voter fraud. Even some local worthies can be found doing their duty here in the hustings (see comment stream below). Tonight Fox News did an extended report on 2008 voter fraud just in one state (Ohio), and it was enough to explain away the modest efforts to contain voter fraud during this election. In that state irregularities were legion, and ACORN was extremely active to the point where their lackeys were registering and voting so many times they lost count – one guy on camera said he registered 73 different times. Obama, of course, carried the state. We may recall that efforts to clean the vote four years ago also met with derision and charges of voter intimidation from the Left.
Today Democrats and Republicans there and elsewhere have joined forces to monitor polls and vote counting to make sure that 2008 doesn’t happen again. And as I said, that was only one state. Meanwhile the local lefties are again in chorus (lawful poll watchers are labeled “poll police”) denying the problem exists, and calling to question the sanity and/or the intent of people here who want to help assure that our county’s vote is proper.


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