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Saturday, February 23, 2013

VOTER FRAUD - Cranky Opinion Saturday


VOTER FRAUD

Welcome to Cranky Opinion Saturday
 
This headline recently caught my eye “Did Obama supporter vote 6 times in 2012? Ohio poll worker target of investigation.”  Voter fraud is way more prevalent than people will admit.  The increased use of absentee ballots and voting by computer are only going to exacerbate the problem.

How easy is voter fraud? 

Not too many years ago, every time I went to vote, the names of my ex-wife who lived in the UK and my daughter who lived in North Carolina were listed as registered voters in my N.J. town under my address.  I don’t know how this happened.   Apparently when they moved, their registration stayed.  When I moved to another town, their registrations followed. 

Whenever I voted and saw their names I told the officials that these names were not valid.  Every year I was told to report it to the office of Blah, blah-blah.  I avoided this red tape as I knew no one was voting under these invalid registered names, but it always bothered me.

How often are registered names invalid due to voters moving and registering in other states, voters passing away, or voters being made up?  I wonder how much checking is done to verify voter registration validity.  If the poling officials are not honest there could be thousands of fraudulently registered voters in every district. 

Voter fraud is serious.  Is fraud equally divided between political parties?  Does one parties cheating cancel out the others?  Probably, but either way fraud undermines the election process. 

Fraud exists and it needs to be prosecuted, and yet I have never heard of anyone being fined or going to jail for voter fraud.  Without prosecution fraud will only become more commonplace.

What steps are being done to eliminate fraud?  Nothing.  With powerful computers voter fraud could be made virtually impossible.  Why aren’t voter identification cards issued to every registered voter.  Why can’t registered voters be required to show a driver’s license or a special voter card in lieu of a driver’s license?  Computers could assure duplicate SS numbers are not used to vote more than once even across states.  Why do backward-ass countries like Iraq with ink stained thumbs have more secure voting systems than our country?

I understand the argument that difficult voting systems disenfranchise some voters.  It is more difficult for some voters to reach the poles than others.  Early voting by mail and or computer is needed to allow all citizens to participate in the Democratic process.  Early voting and voting by mail and or computer also makes fraud much easier.

Surely this country has the resources to assure a fair voting process. One that makes fraud difficult yet allows access to all our citizens.

I can’t help but believe that most of the arguments for easy registration and lax voting systems, the same arguments that I may well see in comments to this post, are made by people whose real agenda is they believe voter fraud favors their candidates. 

If we spent half the money that we use to “get out the vote,” to make the system secure, we could also “get out” the fraudulent votes.

 

The preceding opinions were those of a Cranky Old Man, and not necessarily those of management (Mrs. Cranky.)       


13 comments:

  1. Excellent points. The one single, most simple and probably most effective thing we could do IMO is to require all voters have an approved state/fed issued photo ID's. How hard could it be? The poor say they can't get to the courthouse (or wherever) to sign up and it disenfranchises them. Oh, bullshit! If you can make it to the DMV, the unemployment office, the grocery store, etc, there's a way to set up manned kiosk's at convenient places to take pictures for ID's. That alone would go a long way in preventing voter fraud. How much would that cost? Since when has our government worried about what something costs?

    S

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  2. I'm reminded of the Chicago saying, "Vote early & often!"

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  3. Good points, Joe.....especially since about 50% of us don't bother to vote at all. (I don't mean "Us" of course....it's the ones we refer to as "them".

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  4. For several years I have voted by absentee ballot. One year I received a ballot from the last town I was registered in as well as the previous town! I did not vote twice but I have kept the ballot as a souvenir!

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  5. I only vaguely remember something about "digging up" voters in South Texas.

    I cringe when I think about needing one more form of identification for anything.

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  6. All the progressives had their panties in a twist with the required ID for voting in Rhode Island. They all calmed down when told that it would take effect "next election".

    We shouldn't disenfranchise the poor, just the stupid.

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  7. Fraud exists whenever human beings are involved, but I've read that the level of voter fraud was miniscule, certainly not high enough to warrant the draconian measures taken by one party to keep people from voting. I'm suspicious of how and why this is done. People should feel free to vote provided they do so legally, and I wouldn't mind if everyone voted the same way I do. Ha!

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  8. Here's what I don't understand. If people are too poor to get to an office and get a free picture ID, how can they afford a computer to vote online, or transportation to a library to use the computer there?

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  9. I agree, the voting process is a mess. Good points here.

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  10. This is excellent. Great points made. I see no reason in the world the voting system can't be a fairly 'cheat-proof' system. There are just some that would prefer to keep the 'loophole's.

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  11. I believe voting by mail would solve some (not all) issues. You get your ballot a few weeks in advance and have time to think about stuff. You can call your friends... "Hey, Bill, who is that guy and what exactly does he stand for?" or "Suzie, what exactly does this proposition want to accomplish?"

    You'll need two stamps, but that's still cheaper than driving to the polling place and waiting in line.

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  12. We have compulsory voting in Australia which I've always hated, but it does mean that fraud of that type is impossible.

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