From Fox – nine stories, each of which harsh the “New Era Of Hope And Change” mellow, which the mainstream media ignored last year.
83 thoughts on “Nope. No Bias Here.”
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Shot in the Dark
Cranking Open The Big Brass Nozzle Of Truth Since 2002
Doge Gone, you are going to have to do better than that highly biased paper. It defines “voter fraud” specifically and only as cases where an actual voter has voted illegally — not for example, when votes are double-counted or ballot boxes are stuffed. It is also badly written.
Similarly, there are surprisingly few sources of information specifically analyzing the allegations of alleged
voter fraud to determine the extent to which they show reliable evidence of fraud.
“Allegations of alleged voter fraud”? Is this some kind of a joke?
Still, I suppose you found it convincing.
Terry said: “you are going to have to do better than that highly biased paper.”
Translation: “You’ll never find any support for your position that will pass muster with a reality-denying wingnut.”
Dog Bone, you’ve allowed yourself to be manipulated into proving a negative to a bunch of capering jackals. Bad idea. Let us remember that it’s this bunch of kooks who claims there is significant voting fraud on the left. They have the burden of proof. A bad position for them, as they’re not so good with facts.
In fact, as the Brennan Center paper suggests, they can’t make their case cause it ain’t there. (Nice proofreading, though, Terry! So where exactly are those corrupt Democratic votes?) Despite pressure from the Bush White House on Republican U.S. Attorneys to search out and prosecute voting fraud, the wingnuts have no convictions to point to.
Acorn, registration fraud and other irregularities that fall far short of vote fraud are the dust they use to throw in your eyes when you ask ’em where are the corrupt votes?
Right, Clown. Because when there’s smoke, there’s only cold wood.
There you go again. Put up or, well, you know.
Other than dozens of investigations of ACORN activities, and the nagging voice in the back of my head that says “why gin up millions of fake registrations if there’s no intent to use them – to spend George Soros’ money? I mean, what the effing eff, I know liberals are irrational and have no sense of the value of money or work or whatever, but that seems effedup even for them”, I have at the moment no “up” to “put”.
I stress at the moment. I reserve the right to descend on the conversation like Sherman onto Georgia if something jumps out at me.
Like the perpetual inquiry into the corruption of New York and Chicago politicians, it’s an “ongoing investigation”. Lack a conclusion now doesn’t mean there will never be one.
Terry asked me the kind of question that I really appreciate – and thank you Terry for your courtesy as well as substance.
Here is the first example of equating, incorrectly, that voter registration problems – which I do not condone – results in voter fraud. I agree with AC that there have not been crowds of people showing up to vote as Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, or the other fake names that have appeared on fraudulent voter registrations.
Right off the top of my head was this quote that I looked up from Michael Steele, RNC chair, in a solicitation for contributions where he tried to gin up notions that ACORN would be assisting in throwing elections, although his main thrust in the solicitation was to misrepresent the role of ACORN in census taking, along with Michele Bachmann. This unfounded acusation has been repeated, often, by many on the right, without any substantiation — most often in the course of trying to get money.
“With this group’s track record of coming up with countless fraudulent voter registrations in heavily Democrat areas to sway elections to ultra-liberals, you can be sure they’ll be manipulating population numbers as well.”
I quoted Mr. Steele at length on the subject when I wrote “The Consensus on the Census Con”, one of the first things I wrote for Penigma back in June.
The problems with voter registration is that there are “catch twenty-twos”, like the laws in Indiana which both require groups like ACORN to submit all registration forms even if they are known to be wrong / fake and where it is illegal NOT to submit them, and the other conflicting laws in Indiana which make it illegal TO submit them.
Mitch, your ignoring that some of the fake voter registrations were not initiated by ACORN, they were accepted – and subsequently flagged as bogus when submitted by ACORN. You are also ignoring that ACORN paid volunteers to get voter registrations, creating apparently an inherent moral hazard where it was purely profitable to those individuals to act dishonestly, but where there was no further profit in anyone trying to vote using those dishonest registrations.
That appears to be the motive in other instances of voter fraud that have nothing to do whatsoever with ACORN as well.
Further, there have been historically, and including in the 2008 elections, voter registration fraud on both sides of the political spectrum. It is not unique or endemic or unique to either side. However, I repeat that there is just no support that the voter registration fraud by ANYBODY has resulted in an equally wide instance of fraudulent voting. If you can find me any instances that show otherwise, please do. Otherwise, I respectfully submit that the two do not have a causal correlation.
I would also suggest you examine other factors like the SCOTUS cases relating to alleged voter fraud and attempts to enact more restrictive voter identification laws to counter them where it was established that the voter fraud on which those laws were predicated did not happen.
I did not rely exclusively on NYU law school paper, but I would point out that they are among the most highly regarded in the country.
However Mitch – Terry, Troy,AC – if any of you find more than a rare instance of voter fraud, if you are able to demonstrate where voter registration problems actually result in fraudulent voting, I will enthusiastically join you in opposing it and calling for prosecution and tougher voter registration restrictions.
Until then….no.
Dog Gone, I don’t know how you can put so much stock in a hackneyed ‘study’ from the Brennan Center. You do realize that the Brennan Center has acted as Acorn’s attorney in several voter registration cases, don’t you?
You seem to have a very difficult time telling truth from propaganda.
Clown-“Paranoid wingnut fantasies.” Gee, Boz, here i thought the paranoid people were the ones running around crying “the world`s going to end!” because of non existent warming. Oh, wait- you are those people. Again, your`re having a very hard time keeping up.
Mitch said: ““why gin up millions of fake registrations if there’s no intent to use them”
Lemme help you out there, Mitch. Acorn is trying to register low-income voters, a great many of whom vote Democrat. Acorn paid low-income people more money the more registrations they turned in. Voila: lots of non-conforming and completely made-up forms get turned in.
Of course, determining how many of these “Donald Duck” registrations turned into fraudulent votes is an incredibly simple matter. You just follow up and find out if the phony registrations tried to vote. They didn’t. Of course you wingnuts don’t want to look to closely at whether there’s any actual vote fraud. You just make the smoke/fire argument for political purposes – to keep down low-income voting. You know this as well as Angryclown.
In other words, you lie to discourage people from voting. Because you are bad, selfish people.
Terry, do you have the dates for that representation of ACORN? Did you check if it was before or after the publication of the study?
It makes a difference if you are going to imply the study is slanted on behalf of ACORN rather than what the study determined happened to subsequently also support the defense of ACORN. Chicken,egg.
I did not rely on that or any other single study. I looked at a wide variety of sources to form my conclusion. Can you provide any contradictory factual, verifiable information to the contrary? I am interested in seeing it if you can.
Mitch, you write “I mean, what the effing eff, I know liberals are irrational and have no sense of the value of money or work or whatever, but that seems effedup even for them”, I have at the moment no “up” to “put”.”
Mitch I have known you since before you were married and had kids, without counting years – you’re about to be a grandfather in the forseeable future. In that entire time, I am confident that I have never, ever, ever given you cause to believe I supported dishonesty in anything.
I have never, ever given you reason to believe that I supported winninig at any cost, winning anything other than fairly, or that I would rather lose fairly than win unfairly. Least of all willing to support that in politics. My beliefs and ideology don’t work that way, and you know it. I’m left of you in some things – so? It doesn’t make me dishonest. It doesn’t make people like your parents dishonest, or Pen either. I’m unwilling unless or until proven otherwise to believe that of AC or AB either. I can only hope that you are not thinking of any of us when you make those statements, but instead you are visualizing some theoretical person or persons – and in doing so Mitch you are unfair, without better evidence; your passion is strong but misplaced.
Your words are full of division, of polarization where it is not necessary for them to be. In opposing corruption, and dishonesty, you have a basis if it is true and demonstrable, for common cause regardless of political view point or ideology. I will be the first person in line to join you in objecting to it, in seeking to have it prosecuted and punished.
But if you can’t show instances of people fraudulently voting as a direct result of the problems with voter registration, may I please – please – ask that you not assume that just because people may have a different political view point you not demonize them with the assumption they are dishonest or approve dishonesty?
I would also suggest that your assumptions that people who have a different political viewpoint are ‘irrational, have no sense of the value of money, work’. I do not believe anything I have commented here, or the words of either AC or AB deserve ‘effing ef’ etc.
Dog offered “if you are able to demonstrate where voter registration problems actually result in fraudulent voting”
which is the problem I expressed to the now shunned clown. Ballots are secret, and anonymous. In any event there is little effort made to cross-reference registrations over the many districts to establish multiple voting. So how can one demonstrate something that no one is looking for?
Terry – did you disagree with my quotation of Michael Steele, and the existence of similar statements by Michele Bachmann and others making the unsubstantiated assertion that voter registration fraud resulted directly in a changed election outcome?
I’m still waiting for proof.
There isn’t any proof for those statements.
They are lies, distortions, misrepresentations.
I would hope they would not be continued or perpetuated here.
Kermit, the content of ballots are secret – who one votes for.
WHO votes is not a secret. It is a matter of record. There are lists that are checked and verified for voters, with names and addresses. What do you think election staff do during elections???????????? On what basis do you possibly claim no one is checking??????????? Not true Kermit. I strongly encourage you to look more closely into you local polling place, election judges, and sec states.
What do you think is the basis for legal challenges about elections, all the way up to the SCOTUS for laws about voter qualification and identification? Do you really believe for even an instant that you could fill out a voter registration form fraudulently, say claiming to be Kermit the Frog of Muppetville ——–and actually cast a vote under that name as well as vote using your own legitimate identity?
It is precisely because someone is looking that instances for example of felons attempting to vote when they are not permitted are caught.
You really ought to consider the ramifications of what you have written here, Dog Gone. If you have an election with 5,000 votes cast, and 500 of those votes can be shown to have been cast using fraudulent registrations, you can’t take the votes out of the pile, because you can’t match a fraudulent registration to any particular vote. Solution? All the votes stay in, and the burden is on whoever may challenge the result to show that the fraudulent votes were both systematic and significant, and that’s a tall hill to climb. I believe that this is what happened during the Washington gubernatorial race of 2004.
As a result of increasingly sophisticated campaign tools we are bound to have more, rather than less, close elections in the future. In a winner-take-all system small changes in voting laws can yield dramatic results.
If the electoral process is seen to be corrupt or unfair the social contract frays. We have two very different philosophies on how the legitimacy of system can be maintained; conservatives place the emphasis on registration. If the registration process is rigorous you reduce stress on our patchwork system of ballot monitors and poll watchers. Democrats, it seems to me, would like every close election to end in court with layers arguing over a pile of provisional ballots. You tell me which is closer to democracy.
ACORN pays people to submit fraudulent registrations (“Viola”) and other folks are magically “bad, selfish people”? I like the “smoke/fire” reference and then the big leap into “you lie to discourage people from voting”. That you call others “stupid” is entertaining, angryclown.
Terry prattled: “If you have an election with 5,000 votes cast, and 500 of those votes can be shown to have been cast using fraudulent registrations, you can’t take the votes out of the pile, because you can’t match a fraudulent registration to any particular vote.”
But you can count the fraudulent votes. And you can compare them to the margin of victory for one side or the other to determine whether there’s even a theoretical possibility a particular election may have been affected.
Where are those fraudulent votes? Where are those tainted elections? If you can’t answer those questions, feel free to shut the fuck up. Cause you got nothing.
Troy, lemme help you out here, since you are clearly ethically retarded.
People who pay others to turn in fraudulent registrations: negligent if they don’t know what’s going on, bad if they do.
People who turn in fraudulent registrations: bad.
Wingnuts who pretend there’s significant vote fraud in elections to back unnecessary measures designed to keep the vote down, to the benefit of wingnuts: bad.
What do you think election staff do during elections???????????? On what basis do you possibly claim no one is checking???????????
Well they check the registration at that specific polling place. Are there any cross-references of multiple polling places for the same voter? I don’t think so.
Also, the election judge is pretty limited in the scope of the verification they do on site. If I walked in with you and showed my ID and vouched that you were Miss Piggy, they would give you a ballot, no more questions asked.
We have more than one instance of more votes cast than eligible voters. Washington State is an excellent example. It’s really not difficult.
Kermit, voter reistration records are a matter of public record. They are not secret. In many states they are even accessible online. They are, along with DMV records where, among other things, where jury duty notices are drawn from.
The discrepancies in Washington State appear to be related to a variety of causes, including how they handle the registrations of homeless people in Washington.
In the WA election of 2004 the winner had an official plurality of 129 votes. Around a thousand votes were cast illegally and were included in the final count because, as I wrote earlier, there is no easy way to eliminate them from the total.
They could have been eliminated by a more thorough screening at either the registration level or at the polling place. Sloppy registration procedures produce fraudulent votes because the system assumes registrations are valid. An outfit like Acorn knows this and exploits the system to corrupt the democratic process.
Dog Gone wrote-
Terry, do you have the dates for that representation of ACORN? Did you check if it was before or after the publication of the study?
It doesn’t matter. does it? The Brennan center is an advocacy group. Did you think that the legal definition of non-partisan is the same as the common definition of unbiased? Do you not understand that this is a political document?
Notice that, at the very beginning, Levitt defines ‘voter fraud’ in the narrowest terms, and in the way that is least likely to occur because it is the easiest to detect before a vote is cast:
Note that, according to this definition, if an Acorn worker registered a person, purposely gave them false information about what precinct they were a resident of and where they should cast there vote, and that person acted on that information, by Levitt’s definition no voter fraud would have taken place.
The definition Levitt uses is not a legal definition. It was devised by a liberal political science professor named Minette.This is a classic issue framing, “I will define what is wrong and than I will prove that by that measure I am not wrong”.
I strongly suggest that you expand your studies of the problem of voter fraud by reading this document:
http://www.ejfi.org/Voting/Voting-9.htm
It’s a plain vanilla, Joe-Friday report by Florida Law enforcement on the types of voter fraud they encounter. It is not an advocacy piece, it doesn’t take political sides. If you read it you’ll note that the people who actually enforce laws against voter fraud define it more liberally than Mr. Levitt does.
Wow, Terry, you should be embarrassed. A “plain vanilla Joe Friday” report from Florida, circa 1998? Forget that it’s 12 years old. Joe Friday’s boss here is a guy named Jeb Bush. The brother of Joe Friday’s boss is a guy named George W. Bush. Florida conducted a well-documented purge of its registration rolls which made it difficult or impossible for many eligible Floridians to vote.
Not for nothing, Terry. Angryclown could do a better job arguing your side.
You are a crazy person, Angry Clown. Do you believe the Bushies infested every political institution in FL other than its supreme court? Crawl back in your cave. Sane people are having a discussion.
angryclown, lemme help you out here, since you are clearly logically retarded.
Anyone who uses the phase “smoke/fire” to defend their party has to be stupid to use the same type of argument to attack: “Wingnuts … pretend … unnecessary … designed … benefit … wingnuts: bad”. Lots of unsupported B.S. there. I understand that this is what angryclown believes, but is it true? No.
Gee, Terry, now that you mention it: The Florida Judiciary, like it’s federal counterpart, is a separate branch of government. The governor can’t order the Supreme Court to do stuff, nor can he fire Supreme Court Justices who displease him.
High-school civics, Terry. Guess you didn’t get that from your homeschooling.
Clown is such a frothing moonbat he can’t even get his facts straight. Jeb Bush didn’t take office until 1999. The FL document I link above is dated January,1998, when Lawton Chiles, A democrat, was governor of Florida.
You are correct, Terry. Jeb Bush didn’t take office until 1999. Angryclown thanks you for setting the record straight and retracts that part of His argument.
If you have as compelling an case that a 12-year-old report by some Florida bureaucrat is conclusive on the issue of voter fraud in 2010, you will have won the argument.
Angryclown awaits.
Actually, Mr. Clown, I withdraw that document.
Turns out it was written by fruitcakes.
Terry, Troy and Kermit have piqued my curiosity to dig into this a bit further. I should be able to get an interesting blog piece out of the digging.
What I did come across, in just a casual browse were statements like this:
A draft report last year by the Election Assistance Commission, a bipartisan government panel that conducts election research, said that “there is widespread but not unanimous agreement that there is little polling place fraud.”
and a lot of coverage of the attempts by the Bush Administration to politicize the DoJ, seeking to prosecute supposed Democratic fraud, where their own Bush DoJ appointees felt there was no justification for pursuing the charges – including Washington state, in the governor’s race in question.
I have not found where the intended prosecutions were equally dilligent or earnest in ferreting out Republican voter fraud, or ALL voter fraud, just Democratic voter fraud in swing states where the Bush adminsitration appears to have intended to affect the outcome of expected close elections.
So gentlemen, I will be not only doing a bit of digging as time permits today and if needed other days this week, I will see what different information from my own digging results from consulting my local library reference librarians, and will either phone or email our MN Sec State office to inquire in greater detail as to what investigations are routine for new registrations to vote and/or registrations vouched for or otherwise ID’d at the time of voting.
Absent clear examples of a pattern of proven voter fraud – not just voter registration fraud (and no I don’t condone that either, but it is significantly less serious than altering the outcome of an election) – the accusations floated by Steele, Bachmann and others on the right are not substantiated. That there has not been pursuit of possible voter fraud doesn’t track with documented facts either. But if you can produce facts of which I am currently unaware – I’d be delighted to see them, and I promise to maintain an open mind. And I repeat, if you find a pattern of voter fraud, on behalf of ANY party, I will enthusiastically join you in objecting to it, without regard to the politics or political loyalties involved.
Only a fool would claim MN had no voter fraud in the last election.
An even bigger travesty is the fact that there were not consistent standards for counting votes. It is sad when a seasoned citizen’s vote in rural MN doesn’t count but a 17 year old homeless kid from murderapolis vote does count for the same reason the other vote was rejected.
It makes it a lot easier to rig an election.
What has been done to prevent this from happening in the future?
Boohoo, K-Wad. Angryclown laughs at you extreme-right wingnuts who didn’t care a bit about vote fraud until it bit you in the ass.
Project much AssClown?
(btw, it doesn’t look like your speech impediment is getting any better… do you still confuse people when you ask if you can wuck their wok or wick their whut?) 😆
I have always been against selectively picking and choosing standards, be it in FL or MN. Too bad you can’t honestly say the same. (you are exactly the opposite as a matter of FACT)
My Karma just ran over your Dogma
Angry Clown, do you need help?
Perhaps you could reduce your caffeine intake.
If your problem is a lack of female companionship, I understand that there are many courtesans, charging reasonable fees, in the greater New York area. Keep in mind that you get what you pay for.