The vote fraud crusade

The vote fraud crusade
By:John Hayward
6/12/2012 04:32 PM

There is a vote fraud crusade going on in this country. The most zealous crusaders are not the people trying to eliminate vote fraud, but rather those trying to protect it.

The Obama Justice Department, headed up by Attorney General Eric Holder, works tirelessly to attack every reasonable, common-sense effort to require proper identification for voters. At a conference with black church leaders organized by the Congressional Black Caucus in May, Holder declared, “The reality is that in jurisdictions across the country, both overt and subtle forms of discrimination remain all too common, and have not yet been relegated to the pages of history.”

The Attorney General vowed that “when a jurisdiction fails to meet its burden in proving that voting change will not have a racially discriminatory effect, we will object, as we have in 15 different cases.” Of course, the standard Holder sets forth is essentially impossible to meet, because he attacks the very legitimacy of voter-ID efforts, not their conduct.

How could any universal requirement for every American to present the same voter identification possibly constitute “discrimination?” No one has ever suggested or implied that different standards should be established for minority voters, to block them from the polls. Every state considering a voter-ID law has made generous provisions for photo ID cards, which can be obtained at negligible cost and inconvenience, for those who do not already possess one of the numerous acceptable forms of identification.

In Texas (which will do battle against the Justice Department in court next month) voter identification certificates would be provided for free to those who lack a drivers’ license, personal ID card, certificate of citizenship, military ID, passport, or concealed-carry handgun license. Only if the applicant lacks a birth certificate could a cost be incurred… and the lunatic Left shrieks that this would constitute some sort of “poll tax.” What sane nation would allow people who have no form of identification at all - not even a birth certificate - to vote?

No, the madcap standard of “discrimination” invoked to prevent the 21st-century United States from developing a logical voter identification system is the assertion that changes to voter registration laws, in states covered by the Civil Rights Act of 1965, would disproportionately affect selected minority constituencies… even though no attempt is made to demonstrate the effect would be malevolent or discriminatory. The Justice Department objected to the Texas law on the grounds that Hispanic residents are 46 percent more likely to lack one of the acceptable forms of photo ID, and therefore require one of those free voter identification certificates. (The state of Texas disputes this percentage, calling it a “misleading” number derived from “two separate data sets never designed to be matched.”)

In a similar vein, when the state of Florida set about purging illegal aliens and other invalid voters from its rolls, the Justice Department objected because the effort would disproportionately scrutinize Hispanic voters. Imagine that – a program to stop illegal immigrants from voting would affect a lot of immigrants! That’s not an argument, it’s a black hole from which no logic can escape.

In a modern era of advanced data processing, opposition to simple and reliable voter identification is simply ludicrous. American citizens submit to, and indeed demand, precise identification measures from countless private-sector entities. It is nonsense to claim that voting should be a less secure process than renting a movie from an automated kiosk in a grocery store. First Lady Michelle Obama required a photo ID and Social Security Number from every attendee to a June book signing. The First Lady’s cookbook is treated as a more secure document than presidential ballots.

Another activity requiring photo ID is entering a federal courthouse. Eric Holder expressed surprise when he was informed of this by Rep. Dan Lungren (R-CA) at a House Judiciary Committee hearing on June 7. That’s right – the Attorney General of the United States was not aware that many federal courthouses ask visitors to present photo ID. The defenders of vote fraud literally do not know what they are talking about. They don’t feel obliged to do their homework and prepare reasoned arguments. They think they need only cry “racism,” and the discussion is over.

As for the alleged rarity of voter fraud, it’s astonishing how much of it actually turns up, once blinkers are removed and sleuths bend over their magnifying glasses. Florida’s ostensibly controversial “purge” of illegal alien voters swiftly turned up at least forty of them statewide – most of whom actually admitted their illegal status, as soon as the state challenged them. Several of those people confirmed they have actually cast illegal votes in the past.

The Miami Herald took stock of Florida’s efforts on June 12, observing that “so far, there’s less evidence of suppression and more evidence of fraud. The number of noncitizens who are on the rolls or appear to have cast unlawful ballots grows by the day. And there’s no evidence yet that any lawful voter has been kicked off the rolls.” The argument against Florida’s scan of the voter rolls boils down to asserting that simply investigating voter fraud is somehow immoral.

Weeks after Florida sent certified letters to 2,600 suspected illegal voters, a thousand of them had failed to respond. It remains to be seen how many of those might prove to be illegitimate voters, but at the very least, it doesn’t seem like they’re putting much effort into safeguarding their sacred franchise.

And then there’s the suspicious election of Senator Al Franken (D-MN), the debacle no opponent of rational voter registration wants to talk about. Franken was declared the winner by only 312 votes in 2008, in a race that is still under investigation. Some believe over a thousand felons produced illegal Franken votes, which had a tendency to appear in unlikely places once the recounts began.

Fox News discussed the Franken case, and other cases of suspected vote fraud, in an April 2012 special report called “Stealing Your Vote,” embedded in its entirety below:

Click here to view.

Of course, no investigation can reverse Franken’s years in the Senate. That’s the reason vote fraud is such a pernicious problem: the rewards are huge, the likelihood of detection is somewhat thin, and the very process of investigation must be conducted through a billowing fog of politics.

It is long past time for Americans to declare, in one voice, that we will no longer tolerate obsolete electoral systems, or treat efforts to disenfranchise legitimate voters as a joke. Abuse of our electoral system is profoundly unpatriotic, a betrayal of our common citizenship. This should be something people from every corner of the political spectrum can readily agree upon…

… but it isn’t.

Besides whatever vested interests certain parties might have in perpetuating voter fraud, the crusade against voter registration has become a useful political rallying point. The Left is concerned that enthusiasm is low among President Obama’s supporters. Wild, paranoid charges of racism against voter ID proponents are just the ticket to jump-start his faltering political engines.

The executive director of the Congressional Black Caucus, Angela Rye, described voter ID laws as “a modern-day poll tax” on CSPAN just last weekend. On the same day, Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD) appeared at a panel called “The War on Voting” at the far-left “Netroots Nation” conference, and declared “these laws are the new Jim Crow laws of our times.” He also described them as “a stain on our democracy.”

The real “war on voting” is being waged by the defenders and apologists of vote fraud. Every black and Hispanic American should be utterly outraged at the insinuation they’re too dumb or lazy to comply with simple, common-sense laws which are less complex than the procedure for opening a checking account. They should be equally furious at the attempt to dilute their legitimate vote with widespread criminal schemes. They should be offended by the lazy appropriation of civil-rights language to trigger political stampedes. Most of all, they should be angry at the notion that ballots are just random scraps of paper, to be treated in the most casual manner. Too many people fought long and hard, both before and during American history, for those precious votes.
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To read another article about Voter Fraud, click here.
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To read another article by John Hayward, click here.