True The Vote? More Like True The Mail.
Okay, so most of you know that Republicans are running around so shaking and excited that they could thread a sewing machine while it’s running about a horror right here in the United States of Damn America — stand up and holler — voter fraud!
GOP Version of Typical South Texas Democratic Voter
They pretend to be totally convinced that Democrats are busing in people from Guatemala or Russia or someplace to vote in the Illinois election. I say pretend because they truly are pretending. They are attempting to take our eyes off real voter fraud being done by Republicans – Voting By Mail.
I told you about it last week and how Republicans in my county got away with it. And the New York Times picked up on it this morning.
In a 2005 report signed by President Jimmy Carter and James A. Baker III, who served as secretary of state under the first President George Bush, the Commission on Federal Election Reform concluded, “Absentee ballots remain the largest source of potential voter fraud.”
On the most basic level, absentee voting replaces the oversight that exists at polling places with something akin to an honor system.
“Absentee voting is to voting in person,” Judge Richard A. Posner of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit has written, “as a take-home exam is to a proctored one.”
Now, I’m not saying that the New York Times picked it up because I mentioned it. I’m just saying that might have happened. And the Easter Bunny might have lost his cotton tail. You can’t know theses kinds of things for a fact.
So kinda by accident and kinda by damn nosy, I discovered that the Democrats in Fort Bend have never had a recognizable Democrat on the committee that looks at vote by mail ballots to decide if they are legitimate. So, just out of pure meanness, I called my county chairman (who is new) and asked if I could be on that committee. He not only said yep, he also asked me to round up two other people to be on it.
So, I got my friend Cary, a retired FBI Agent, and Judy, a recently retired librarian and meaner than ten acres of snakes when it comes defending Democrats. Then I called the elections administrator and announced our picks. The election administrator seems like a nice enough guy but he didn’t seem real excited about us invading the usual committee. He nicely explained to me that in past they all gotten along on the committee.
I know this is going to come as a shock to you, but I am notoriously bad at getting along. I know, shocking. And if you think a FBI agent or a librarian list “gets along” at the top of their resume, then you’ve never tried to rob a bank or write in a library book and you need to get out more often.
So, all I’m telling you is to keep your eyes open for voter fraud among Republicans because they wouldn’t be upset about it if they weren’t doing it.
And that’s the damn truth.
Wish I could be a fly on the wall at that first committee meeting…….
1Agreed, with the proviso that the Repubs believe that when they do things like this it’s actually noble and in defense of “their” country.
2Your link takes me to Word Press where I’m not a “member” and doesn’t give me the option to “join.” Any advice? Is this your day job?
3I’d love to read your piece on this.
I voted by mail in the primary. At damned near 80 years old, I can do that.
Every Democrat running for office in the area sends a post card type thing, that all you have to do is: sign, stamp and mail.
So, they send me a Democratic ballot. I fill it out, stamp it and send it back. Do that count it? Who the hell knows?
So, in the General, in November, me, my voter registration, my driver’s license, Social Security Card, Whatever it takes, (if need be my birth certificate), are going to the polling place (where ever they have moved it to this year), and that’s where I’ll cast my vote.
It still may not be counted, but it has a better than even chance.
4HOly cr**! I thought the junk the Repukes were pulling in other parts of the country with their damn photo ID con was bad! As usual, they are “using” another population to spike the punch, so to speak: Hispanics, especially illegal immigrants which they claim are going to descent in endless hordes at every polling place on Election Day and re-elect Obama. So they went and did things like screw around with early voting days and hours like in Ohio so that the working poor who don’t get paid for days off like sick days and such get less and less of a chance to vote. Add to that the way they closed places in a number of states where you could go to get a photo ID or even register and only opened those places every fifth Wednesday of the month, even in the months without five weeks! Or if they were open each week it was only for a few hours on one day and then only if the guy in charge cared to show up with the key to the front door. God, I love the smell of tar and feathers in the morning!
5Arizona has a Permanent Early Ballot list, which any eligible voter can request to be put on.We have to show ID in order to register the first time, but after that when we change our addresses for driver’s license or State ID it automatically changes our voter registration as well. When we get our ballots we can mail them in, deposit them in any early voting location in a locked receptacle or in a locked box at our polling place on election day. I check with the election Board after every election and it shows that I have voted. If it didn’t then I might worry. I still like voting at my leisure at home because I can research anything I need to know about candidates and propositions on the Internet.
6My rule of thumb is if the Republicans are accusing Democrats of doing something then they are the ones doing it!
7I think those people on the committee got a tiger by the tail and don’t know it. You three have fun!
8We had a sleazy tp candidate during the 2010 elections.
9His staff posted 10 signs on the local hospitals lawn, which was on the way to the voting place. When I got to there, there was a truck with a flat tire right across from the door of the building. The truck had the candidates name all over.
Voted, came home, called the hospital security about the signs and the Election people re; truck.
Our laws state that you cannot have any candidates info within 100 feet of the door where voting takes place.
Here in Colorado, there HAS to be people of opposite parties at every precinct, and every place ballots are in sight, or counted.
10That even goes for signing the results from the paper that spits out of the voting machines when the polls are closed.
I’ve been an election judge 6 times.
I thought I had heard it all. “We get along”?
11My son’s at school in Nac and has requested a ballot (his first election!). I’ll tell him to write “Hey there, Susan!” on the envelope.
12I can’t forget that established form of vote fraud that we’ve had for years called the electoral college. California gets one electoral voter per 700,000 people– Wyoming gets one per 190,000. The fifteen least populous states combined– nearly all voting R– get one more electoral vote than California and have half its population (combined).
13And I won’t even mention the good people of Washington DC, who have no vote in Congress at all. Maybe not relevant, but it needs to be mentioned often until that’s changed.
It could be worse than you think. The pretextual “hunt for voter fraud” goes beyond registration purging and poll watchers. In states where poll watchers are more heavily regulated, True the Vote and their affiliates/allies are recruiting and training people to be actual election judges. One organizer went so far as to say “Being an election judge is even better than being a poll watcher as you are actually running the election.”
So do you think that driver’s license makes your vote safe?
Any liquor store clerk knows how easy it is to get a fake. Do we expect TTV not to be aware of this fact in their training? Does the state provide adequate guidance for election judges in determining whether an ID’s picture sufficiently matches the person staning before them? What about the signature matching requirements?
These subjective judgment calls concerning a person’s right to vote a regular ballot may end up in the hands of someone trained to be paranoid rather than reasonably vigilant. See http://www.ragingwisdom.com/who-watches-the-poll-watchers-part-ii/ for some of the flaws in Ohio’s laws protecting voters on election day, and here
14http://www.ragingwisdom.com/who-watches-the-poll-watchers-part-iii/ for Florida which has a horrific defect in its voter challenge law that is not getting enough attention.
I have a girlfriend whose last driver license picture was taken when she was on chemo for breast cancer. She’s bald as an egg in that picture and looks pretty frail. She doesn’t look much like that any more. But we’ve managed to shoot down the voter ID law here for now.
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