From the very beginning of my site I have looked for stories on vote fraud. I have done that because I believe that, after many decades of decline, vote fraud has been increasing in the last three decades, and because most journalists give the subject little attention. (Exception: John Fund.)
And so I have been searching for stories on vote fraud, using fairly simply search routines. (Typically, I just search Google News on "vote + fraud" — and I always find new examples when I do that search.) As part of the redesign of my site, I plan to intensify my searches, and to make both the searches, and my cataloging, more systematic. As I have said before, I would be delighted to get your tips on vote fraud. If you see a vote fraud story, I would appreciate it greatly if you would send me an email with a link to the story.
I would also be interested in any ideas you might have for cataloging the vote fraud stories I have begun to accumulate. (Currently, I just have a list of recent posts, on the right side of my site. It doesn't include many of the earlier posts I did on the subject, and is already awkwardly long.) I may even end up creating a simple database, but I'll have to think hard about whether that would be worth the effort.
Although I have much more to learn about vote fraud, I do have some tentative conclusions. Judging by news stories, most vote fraud is committed by Democrats, specifically minority Democrats. (Anyone familiar with American political history will not be surprised by that pattern.) Most vote fraud is committed with absentee ballots. Vote fraud problems tend to be chronic; they occur election after election in the same counties. If, for instance, you were to ask me where I would expect Republican vote fraud in 2010, I would say, without hesitation, eastern Kentucky. (For Democratic vote fraud, there would be many obvious places to choose from.) Most prosecutors are reluctant to investigate vote fraud, because they don't see it as important, and because they know that some will see their investigations as partisan. (One odd result: Prosecutors are more likely to get involved in vote fraud cases when the fraud occurred in a primary election.)
Cross posted at Jim Miller on Politics.
(I am also interested, within limits, in vote fraud cases in other nations. I think, for instance, the British experience with absentee ballots (which they call postal ballots) is quite instructive.)
Posted by Jim Miller at March 17, 2009 12:29 PM | Email ThisThe website should plainly communicate "This site provides documented proof of voter fraud in Seattle and Washington state."
The website should provide a method for visitors to the site to communicate their feelings on this matter to the the correct officials on the state and federal level. (Links to email addresses and websites is good. Form letters, petitions and sign-up forms for email lists and action committees is better.)
No offense to Sound Politics as I love what you do here, but if you post your material on this site, you're burying the big story. This one needs to get more exposure and a dedicated website will allow more bloggers, sites, etc. to link directly to the material faster.
Posted by: johnny on March 17, 2009 02:23 PMMore broadly, you have absolutely no proof of large-scale malfeasance in the slightest. Conservative bogeymen, and nothing more.
Posted by: demo kid on March 18, 2009 12:27 AMSo, you may conclude that voter fraud in news stories is more likely to involve a democrat with some level of accuracy, but you can't conclude from that information that democrat's commit more examples of voter fraud.
Rick D also of course noted that even your methodology for accurately tracking news stories is at best unproven. (I'd describe it as lazy).
But then, I'm thinking that your intention isn't to create facts and data anyway, but to provide a background to support your opinion regardless of reality.
Posted by: BA on March 18, 2009 05:08 AMTake Washington state, where former U.S. attorney John McKay declined to pursue allegations of voter fraud after that state's hotly contested 2004 governor's race was decided in favor of Democrat Christine Gregoire by 133 votes on a third recount. As the Seattle media widely reported, some "voters" were deceased, others were registered in storage lockers, and still others were ineligible felons. Extra ballots were "found" and declared valid 10 times during the vote count and recount. In some precincts, more votes were cast than voters showed up at the polls.
Mr. McKay insists he left "no stone unturned" in investigating allegations of fraud in the governor's race but found no evidence of a crime. But in an interview with Stefan Sharkansky of SoundPolitics.com in May, Mr. McKay admitted that he "didn't like the way the election was handled" and that it had "smelled really, really bad."His decision not to prosecute was apparently based on the threshold of evidence he insisted be met before he would even deploy FBI agents to investigate: a firsthand account of a conspiracy to alter the outcome of the election. But Mr. McKay is incorrect in saying that he had to find a conspiracy in order to reach the federal threshold for election crimes.
..Of course, some on the left whine it's simply a 'boogeyman' propped up by the right when voter fraud occurs and happens to favor their political persuasion while forgetting they were caterwauling "gore got more" and "Diebold machines" for 8 years under G.W. Bush with far less evidence of systemic malfeasance. Fund sums up the article with pretty much the same attitude I take when it comes to Democratic voter fraud when he states that "[t]he Justice Department may be dysfunctional and poorly led, but the Democratic Congress seems more interested in paralyzing its activities than helping to fix the problem."
I couldn't agree more.
Posted by: Rick D. on March 18, 2009 05:10 AM
When are you guys going to give up on this Gov. Election, the FBI and your Republican appointed U.S. Attorney said there was no fraud, the U.S. Attorney was fired for not ginning up a case! So get real people and turn off Fox, turn off Linbaugh and read the news.
Posted by: Jay on March 18, 2009 08:12 AMWhen are you guys going to give up on this Gov. Election, the FBI and your Republican appointed U.S. Attorney said there was no fraud, the U.S. Attorney was fired for not ginning up a case! So get real people and turn off Fox, turn off Linbaugh and read the news.
Posted by: Jay on March 18, 2009 08:18 AMThe poor persecuted republicans on this blog have very limited capacity to actually deal with facts. They like to whine and complain about the Rossi loss (the first time). Even though the republican US Attorney and the republican judge in the hand-picked republican county found no evidence of fraud.
Notice that in the trial, the best evidence the republicans could come up with was republican fraud.
Real election fraud, however, has been documented. In New Hampshire republicans were responsible for deliberately jamming the phone lines of the democratic party on election day to prevent the "get-out-the-vote" drive. The chain of command may have gone all the way to the National party Chair who was in contact with some of the convicted felons:
"In his book, "How to Rig an Election: Confessions of a Republican Operative," Raymond details how he got caught. An hour and a half into the jamming operation he received an e-mail from a Republican official, frantically telling him to shut down the calls. The e-mail read: "Chairman wishes not to proceed with this project ... insists it violates federal law."
Federal agents eventually paid a visit to Raymond's office.
Raymond decided to come clean about his role in the operation and cooperate with investigators.
"I felt like I had an obligation, and not obligation to my country or obligation to the people in New Hampshire, nothing like that," Raymond said. "I had a responsibility to my family."
One of Raymond's alleged co-conspirators, James Tobin, was a top official with the National Republican Senatorial Committee that year. He went on to serve as George W. Bush's Northeastern regional re-election chairman in 2004. Tobin was initially convicted. But he succeeded in having that decision overturned by an appellate court. Just last week, Tobin was again indicted in the case on two counts of making false statements to a federal agent. His lawyer had no comment.
Another co-conspirator and former chairman of New Hampshire's Republican Party, Charles McGee, pleaded guilty to phone harassment in the case and served seven months in prison."
Link: http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/22/rigging.election/index.html
There isn't anything wrong with someone asking "who should I vote for?" - plenty of examples on this blog of folks offering answers to that question.
Voting by mail isn't as secure as voting in person, provided that proof of identity is required at the polling place.
That said, is it therefore acceptable to disenfranchise the infirm, or out-of-state students, or deployed service folks, who can't make it to the polling place in person on voting day?
Seems to me making ANY exception to voting in person only reduces the potential for fraud, but doesn't eliminate it. If we're after perfection, then I think we can't allow for any exception - you're either physically at a polling place or not - end of story.
Posted by: BA on March 18, 2009 02:54 PM