The long story of voter suppression

[Jagos]

The story of the end of the Republican party as we know it begins with their tactics of trying to win not only the White House, but also the other branches of government. The Supreme Court has become massively conservative opting to give corporations more power than the people which is a tremendous travesty of justice. Citizens United increased spending in elections for the largest of campaigners and has brought about a Second Gilded Age. This is an age where the very richest have more access to legislature and policies than the poorest among us.

But how did we get here? How could America lose its freedoms and liberties so much as to have 5 Justices giving so much power to corporations as to make them people?

The first signs came from the fraudulent 2000 election. No matter how you slice it, Gore won:

If all the ballots had been reviewed under any of seven single standards, and combined with the results of an examination of overvotes, Mr. Gore would have won, by a very narrow margin. For example, using the most permissive ''dimpled chad'' standard, nearly 25,000 additional votes would have been reaped, yielding 644 net new votes for Mr. Gore and giving him a 107-vote victory margin.
But the dimple standard was also the subject of the most disagreement among coders, and Mr. Bush fought the use of this standard in recounts in Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade Counties. Many dimples were so light that only one coder saw them, and hundreds that were seen by two were not seen by three. In fact, counting dimples that three people saw would have given Mr. Gore a net of just 318 additional votes and kept Mr. Bush in the lead by 219.
Using the most restrictive standard -- the fully punched ballot card -- 5,252 new votes would have been added to the Florida total, producing a net gain of 652 votes for Mr. Gore, and a 115-vote victory margin.
All the other combinations likewise produced additional votes for Mr. Gore, giving him a slight margin over Mr. Bush, when at least two of the three coders agreed.

And how did we get into Florida deciding the vote? Again, voter suppression in other states:

Conservative anti–voter fraud fervor first arose around the same time as two turning points in American politics. The first was John F. Kennedy’s narrow presidential win in 1960, which many Republicans attributed to voter fraud in Illinois and Texas. The second was the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which, by banning discriminatory voting practices, stoked fear in some quarters about the rising power of black voters. During the run-up to the 1964 presidential election, the Republican National Committee launched Operation Eagle Eye, the nation’s first large-scale anti–voter fraud campaign. As part of the program, the RNC recruited tens of thousands of volunteers to show up at polling places, mostly in inner cites, and challenge voters’ eligibility using a host of tools and tactics, including cameras, two-way radios, and calls to Republican-friendly sheriffs.

Some liberals began pushing for measures (such as Election Day registration) that would lower barriers to voting. Conservatives, on the other hand, took a renewed interest in fighting voter fraud. A raft of new state legislation followed, including voter-ID laws (now on the books in 33 states) and laws requiring people to show proof of citizenship before registering to vote. It’s not clear what problem these measures solve, however. Several exhaustive studies have found that voter fraud is exceedingly rare.

But this isn't the worst of it. The tactics for voter suppression are in fact the same as they were in the 60s when blacks could vote.

.[John] Kelly , who turned up in the state wearing cowboy boots and a 10-gallon hat [in 1981], arranged to have hundreds of thousands of sample ballots mailed to voters in black and Latino neighborhoods. His team then compiled a list of people whose ballots were returned as undeliverable, and allegedly tried to have them struck from the rolls. This technique, known as caging, is controversial because it can purge eligible voters. In this case, an outdated address roster was used—meaning that an unusually large share of the people on Kelly’s list may have been wrongly targeted...

Two weeks later, on Election Day, [in Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s recall election], poll watchers streamed into poor black and Latino precincts around Racine, hunting for evidence that people were cheating. They didn’t find much, though D’Abbraccio later claimed otherwise, apparently in a bid for a recount in a state-Senate race. (Racine’s sheriff investigated the allegations but found no evidence of fraud.) Reports of voter intimidation, however, abounded. Carolyn Castore, the Wisconsin election coordinator for the League of Women Voters, told me that her organization received more than 50 reports from Racine-area voters complaining that True the Vote volunteers had hovered over registration tables and aggressively challenged voters’ eligibility.

So the evidence? It's pretty conclusive. You have more chance of being struck by lightning than electoral fraud. There have been 2068 cases of electoral fraud since 2000, and the fact remains that Republicans are the main ones behind electoral fraud:



Link

One of four staffers of resigned Republican Rep. Thaddeus McCotter was reportedly charged with 5 counts of election fraud on Wednesday September 19th in a Michigan courtroom. The charges run from misdemeanors to felony for allegedly submitting fraudulent signatures on a ballot petition.
Lorianne O’Brady reportedly entered a plea of not guilty to the five charges of voter fraud while her other co-conspirators were charged at an earlier date on August 10th,. The three are Paul Seewald, Mary Melissa Turnbull and Don Yowchuang. The four staffers were charged with a combined total of 36 counts of fraud.

So it seems that electoral fraud is a much larger problem that voter fraud ever will be. And it makes sense. What's the incentive to cast a vote fraudulently versus the incentive to win by manipulating votes?

So if anyone ever tells you that voter fraud is an issue, know that they're lying. Know that they want to win at any cost for a party that has unpopular ideas on women's rights, technology, science, global warming, electoral reform, the concept of life, and every other issue that is currently unpopular with all Americans.

[phil_]

Originally Posted by Jagos

What's the incentive to cast a vote fraudulently versus the incentive to win by manipulating votes?

What if you reeeally don't want Kansas entering the Union as a free state? Or the opposite, to be fair?

[Magus]

I was always rather skeptical of in-person voter fraud concerns anyway since all the scenarios these people come up with revolve around illegal Mexican immigrants mounting some sort of nationwide plot to steal the election for Fuhrer Obama by impersonating 13 million white people.