Silly season signals

Yes, it's election time in the US. Time to roll out the voter fraud stories. Some stories are reported, others made up, but Guambat is sorely confused which is witch.

Yes, vote fraud’s real; Likely gave us Sen. Franken

And one way, historically, that Democrats have been able to swing close elections is through fraud.

Voter Fraud: 4 GOP Staffers Indicted in “Blatant and Disgraceful” Election Fraud

Four congressional staffers of former Republican Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI), who resigned from Congress on July 6, will face criminal felony charges for voter and election fraud in Michigan.

“The approach taken was disgraceful,” said Michigan’s Republican Attorney General Bill Schuette, who announced the charges today. According to a report by the Attorney General’s office, McCotter’s staff had “completely lost its moral compass.”

The election fraud, described as “blatant,” includes forgery and faking petition signatures including using old signatures from past election forms. The voting fraud listed in the indictment report would appear to be the type of criminal activity that various voter ID laws recently passed would not have prevented.

Iowa agent hired to chase voter fraud

An Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation agent has been assigned to a two-year term in Secretary of State Matt Schultz’s office to look into allegations of voter fraud, the Republican election chief’s top cause, The Associated Press has learned.

County auditors, who run local elections, told the AP they were surprised when they were introduced to Special Agent Daniel Dawson and informed of his new role during a training meeting Wednesday in Cedar Rapids. Auditors said they also were taken aback when Dawson and another state official told them that he was looking into between 2,000 and 3,000 voters already.

“I don’t know ever of a DCI investigation into county auditors’ business. I’ve been here since 2008, but I don’t think it’s probably ever happened before,” said Scott County Auditor Roxanna Moritz, who was told Dawson is looking into 180 voters in her county.

D.A. to present evidence in Councilman Alarcon's voter fraud case

Prosecution evidence that Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alarcon lied about where he was living to run for office will get its first public airing at a preliminary hearing scheduled to get underway today.

Alarcon and his wife, Flora Montes De Oca Alarcon, face perjury and voter fraud charges alleging that they falsely claimed a home on Nordhoff Street in Panorama City as their residence so that Richard Alarcon could run for the council seat representing the 7th District.

Mooneyham: The voter-fraud shuffle

That point is that there is little evidence to support the occurrence of widespread, organized voter fraud in North Carolina.

As I’ve pointed out previously in this column, the few instances of concerted, organized voter fraud that have occurred in this state in recent years have primarily involved the collection and use of absentee ballots.

That’s not to suggest that no one has ever claimed someone else’s identity and voted under that person’s name. But there is a huge difference between an individual deciding that he or she is going to vote under an assumed identity, and an organized effort to engage many individuals voting under assumed identities in order to throw an election.

Let’s play voter fraud whack-a-mole!

Remember the bottom line here: no one has found convincing evidence of any recent, significant level of voter fraud. The cases that have been alleged often turn out to be phony. And the voter suppression “remedies” Republicans like don’t have anything to do with whatever fraud is generally alleged.

So: the latest conservative talking point is the claim that there were a bunch of felons who voted improperly in Minnesota in 2008 — perhaps enough to have flipped the very close Senate race in that cycle from Democratic Al Franken to Republican Norm Coleman. Conservative columnist Byron York points out correctly that flipping that seat would have been hugely consequential; the Affordable Care Act, Dodd-Frank, and other legislation might well have failed if Dems had lost just one more Senate seat.

But the accusations are old and long ago debunked. Regardless: suppose, for a minute, that a few hundred felons who were ineligible to vote nevertheless did vote in Minnesota in 2008.

First: clearly, making voters show a photo ID would do nothing whatsoever about preventing more of this. No one was impersonating anyone.

Second: the other main remedy, purging the voter rolls, might or might not catch these (supposed) improper voters, but it would also knock off plenty of eligible voters too — which would be at least as big a problem as allowing the ineligible through. It’s pretty clear that some of the Minnesota voters targeted as “frauds” were perfectly legitimate people whose only crime was sharing a name with an ex-felon — and living in precincts with Democratic majorities.

Nassau voter wants to know why he received 2 extra absentee ballot apps

A few days ago Haftel, a federal retiree, automatically received his application for an absentee ballot. "It just showed up," he said.

It wasn't a problem until a few days later when his Supervisor of Elections Office sent two more applications for absentee ballots, for two different people, to his address. "Who made the decision to mail these things out when it was not done in the past?" Haftel asked. "How many times do people like me get to vote three," he said, "if you choose to be a fraudulent signer."

Nassau County Supervisor of Elections Vicki Cannon said due to new district boundaries this year, the office mailed out absentee ballot request forms with new voting information. Unfortunately, when a person receives someone else's mail and does not return, said Cannon, it is difficult to correct the address.

As for voter fraud, Cannon said an absentee ballot signature is compared to the voter's signature on record. If the it does not match, the ballot is referred to the Canvassing Board for consideration as to whether to reject or accept the ballot.

Voting fraud allegations in E. Longmeadow

The Town of East Longmeadow is at the center of an investigation involving allegations of voting fraud. Some registered democrats told the 22News I-Team they got letters about voting in the Republican primary.

Secretary of State William Galvin's office told 22News the state became suspicious when they discovered an unusual number of party shifts. Turns out a number of registered Democrats got letters about voting in the Republican primary.

No suspects have been accused of wrongdoing but letter recipients are happy they caught the error now before they lost their right to vote at all.

"What if I threw this away and I go to vote in November and someone would tell me that I can't vote because someone already voted in my places, because somebody applied for this, I didn't," East Longmeadow's Douglas Howie said.

MORE LATER:

New database of US voter fraud finds no evidence that photo ID laws are needed

A new nationwide analysis of 2,068 alleged election-fraud cases since 2000 shows that while fraud has occurred, the rate is infinitesimal, and in-person voter impersonation on Election Day, which prompted 37 state legislatures to enact or consider tough voter ID laws, is virtually non-existent.

With 146 million registered voters in the United States during that time, those 10 cases represent one out of about every 15 million prospective voters.

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