Trump's Claim Of Massive Illegal Voting Did Not Happen

Donald Trump showed his thin skin again recently by claiming he would have won the popular vote if not for millions of illegal votes -- especially in Virginia, New Hampshire, and California. He was upset because people were questioning the validity of his presidency, since he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by more than 2.5 million votes (which makes a joke of his claims of a landslide win and a mandate).

The nonpartisan Pulitzer Prize-winning organization PolitiFact checked on the accuracy of Trump's claims -- as they do with other politicians across the political spectrum. And they labeled his claims as "Pants on Fire" (meaning the statements are not accurate and make ridiculous claims).

That will come as no surprise to anyone except the trumpistas. Illegal voting (i.e., voter fraud) is not a problem in the United States (regardless of what the Republicans would like for you to believe). It is very difficult to vote illegally in this country, and the likelihood is that anyone who tries it will be caught (and punished).

But while there was no massive or widespread illegal voting, there were a very few people who tried to do it in this election. The Washington Post scoured the country to find all cases of illegal voting. They found only four documented cases of it (and a very few more that could have happened). Here is what they found:

Cases of voter fraud

A woman in Iowa who voted twice. Terri Lynn Rote had the enormous misfortune of bad timing. Right as the candidate she supported, Trump, was drawing attention to fraud cases, Rote decided to try to vote twice in Des Moines, and got caught. The case made national headlines simply by virtue of the fact that it happened when it did, and that she voted for Trump.

For what it's worth, she suggested that the fault lay with Trump. “The polls are rigged,” she said to a local radio station by way of explaining her multiple votes, echoing another of Trump's complaints.

A man in Texas who voted twice. Phillip Cook was arrested on Election Day after voting twice. He claimed to be an employee of Trump's campaign who was testing the security of the electoral system. He wasn't an employee of the campaign — and the polling location's security worked perfectly well, it seems.

A woman who cast a ballot on behalf of her dead husband. Audrey Cook is a Republican election judge in Illinois. She and her husband applied for absentee ballots because he was ill. He died before completing his, so she filled it out for him and sent it in. The ballot will not be counted.

A woman in Florida who marked absentee ballots. Gladys Coego was hired to open absentee ballots in Miami-Dade County. One of her co-workers noticed that she was going a step further, filling in the bubble for a mayoral candidate with a pen she had in her purse. She was caught in the act and arrested. There's no evidence that she changed any presidential votes.

Possible cases of voter fraud

Two possible cases of fraud in Washington state. Investigators are looking at two possible cases of fraud near the Idaho border. In the first, a man may have signed his deceased wife's name on an absentee ballot; in the second, someone may have voted in both states. Charges have not been filed in either case.

A possible case in South Carolina. A man in the Palmetto State is being investigated on suspicion of voting both by absentee ballot and in person.

Ballots are being challenged in North Carolina. Because of the close gubernatorial race in North Carolina, several dozen ballots were challenged by Republicans as having been cast by convicted felons in the state. An independent group found that at least 18 of the 43 alleged cases of fraud were not fraud at all, instead confusing valid voters with people who were ineligible given their status. There's not yet any verification that the other ballots were from ineligible voters, either.

To be blunt, Trump (and his GOP cohorts) are lying when they claim massive or widespread illegal voting or voting fraud. They are just using this giant lie to suppress the votes of groups they don't think will vote for them -- and we must continue to fight those suppression efforts.

GOP Finally Finds Some Voter Fraud

If you follow politics at all, then you have to know about the Republican effort to suppress the vote of groups they think might vote against them in the coming election. In Florida they are just striking voters from the voter registration rolls, and in many other states they have passed Voter ID laws to accomplish this.

But the GOP can't admit they are just trying to suppress Democratic votes, so they have used voter fraud as their excuse -- claiming voter fraud is rampant in this country. Of course it isn't. There are more people hit by lightning each year that people who vote fraudulently. And when challenged on their claim, the Republicans have struggled to find any instances of voter fraud (let alone rampant voter fraud). The Pennsylvania Republican Party admitted to a federal court that they have no evidence of fraud.

Well, it looks like the Republicans were at least a little bit right. Some voter fraud has finally been found. It seems that an Arizona man has been mailing in ballots for his "companion" -- who died five years ago. But the Republicans may not want to celebrate finding this bit of voter fraud. The guilty party is a white Republican -- and even worse he was running for office on the Republican ticket (for Supervisor of Pinal County). He has now withdrawn from the race.

How embarrassing for the GOP!

Tx GOP Has New Voter Suppression Plan

The card pictured above is a Texas Voter Registration Certificate. Currently, that is the only document that a voter needs to cast a vote in the Lone Star state (and that has worked quite well for many decades). But that's not good enough for Republicans. During the last legislative session they passed a new Voter ID law, requiring a photo ID in addition to the Voter Registration Certificate before a citizen could vote. They claim it is because of massive voter fraud occurring in the state.

Of course, the Republicans have been unable to verify the claims of massive voter fraud. When the Texas Attorney General was asked to produce evidence, the best he could do was show there had been 51 instances of voter fraud since 2002 (and only three quarters of those involved such acts as impersonating a voter, voting more than once, or voting while not eligible to vote). Looking at voting statistics from the Texas Secretary of State shows just how utterly insignificant those 51 instances really are. Since 2002, there have been 29,297,105 votes cast in Texas in the general elections. That's a voter fraud percentage of .0000017% -- and that doesn't even count the primary elections held during those years (which would make that tiny percentage much smaller).

Obviously there is no problem involving voter fraud in the state. But this has never really been about voter fraud anyway. That was just the excuse the GOP used to suppress votes for their political opponents (the Democrats). They knew their Voter ID law would affect Democratic voters much more than any Republican voters. Last week, Texas had to defend that law before a three-judge panel in Washington, D.C., and judging from the questions asked by the judges (and Texas inability to verify voter fraud) it is looking now like the Voter ID law will be overturned by the federal court.

But Texas Republicans are nothing if not obstinate, and they are determined to suppress Democratic votes in the state. With prospects looking dim for the Voter ID law, they have now come up with a new idea. They want to do the same thing that the Republican governor of Florida is doing -- just strike thousands of voters from the voter registration rolls. Secretary of State Hope Andrade has asked the federal government for access to Homeland Security's massive immigration data base. The idea is that they could use that data base to find immigrants who are ineligible to vote but are on state voter rolls. They would then strike those names from the voter rolls.

Of course this move is aimed directly at the Hispanic community, who make up the vast majority of immigrants in Texas. Why would they target Hispanics? That is easily answered by the graphic below.

And it's not just in the presidential race that the Hispanic vote is largely Democratic -- it extends all the way down the ballot. And it is those down-ballot races that Texas Republicans are most concerned about (since Romney is pretty much a lock to carry Texas). In districts that are only 60% to 65% Hispanic, making large numbers of voters ineligible to vote could give Republicans a real chance to flip the district from Democratic to Republican.

The fact that many of those on the Homeland Security data base may be difficult to find (or impossible) just plays into the plans of the GOP. They could just declare dozens (or even hundreds) of people with the same name to be ineligible -- and it would be up to all of those people to prove they really are eligible to vote, which could be very difficult in the short time before the election. And the more people that are disqualified, the more people will probably not be able to vote in November.

This new effort to suppress Hispanic (Democratic) votes is unethical and anti-democratic. But that is no surprise to those of us living in Texas. Ethics and democracy have not been big concerns for state Republican leaders for many years now.

The GOP Effort To Suppress Votes

In the last couple of years, the Republican Party (especially in states where they control the state government) has passed a number of laws. Some of the most onerous of these laws were the ones labeled as Voter ID laws. The Republicans claim that voter fraud is rampant across this country, and they are just trying to eliminate that fraud and protect the sanctity of American elections. That of course, is pure bull crap.

They have tried as hard as they could to find evidence of this widespread voter fraud, but it just doesn't exist. In the end, they just gave up and continued to tell the lie anyway (evidently subscribing to the theory that a lie repeated often enough will be believed). The following facts, from Mother Jones magazine, illustrates this point:

Between 2000 and 2010, there were:

649 million votes cast in general elections

47,000 UFO sightings

441 Americans killed by lightning

13 credible cases of in-person voter impersonation

Here in Texas, the Republicans the Republicans thought they had found some fraud after the last election (less than 10 out of millions of votes), but all charges had to be dropped when it was discovered no fraud was involved. We had a similar case here in the Panhandle, where a woman was arrested for voter fraud. But it turned out she had recently moved and was voting in the right precinct after all, so the charges were dropped.

The Republicans have come up with a solution for a problem that doesn't exist -- but they know that. They were never really out to prevent voter fraud anyway. They were out to suppress the votes of those least likely to vote Republican. Note the chart above. All of the groups least likely to have some form of photo ID are the groups most likely to vote Democratic.

A recent state legislator in Pennsylvania bragged that the voter ID laws would allow Republicans to win the coming election. I don't think he meant for his statement to get out to the general public, but he might actually be right about his assessment. It turns out that the voter suppression law in that state could deny the vote to as many as 10% of registered voters (or about 750,000 voters). If it turns out that the election is close in Pennsylvania, losing 750,000 votes could be disastrous for Democrats.

And the situation is the same in many other states. Florida is a prime example. It is generally considered to be a toss-up state, but the Republican governor is trying to give his party an edge by purging many voters from the voter registration rolls. Here in Texas, the Republicans will probably win anyway, but the Republicans are afraid of the very fast growing minority population so their Voter ID law is a hedge against them losing power in the future.

Voter ID is not protecting American elections from fraud (which basically doesn't exist). It is a naked attempt to hold on to power at all costs -- even if they have to cheat to do it. The Republicans preach a lot about "values", but those values don't seem to include ethics.

Republican Convicted Of Election Fraud

The Republicans have been talking a lot about election fraud for the last couple of years. They want people to believe that there is massive election fraud -- that there is a problem with people voting who should not be voting. To fix this "problem", they have passed Voter ID laws in several states (like Wisconsin and Texas). These laws mandate that a voter must have photo ID in addition to a voter registration card before they are allowed to vote.

What the Republicans have done is to pass a law to solve a problem that doesn't exist. It was revealed the other day that the incidence of this kind of voter fraud in Wisconsin is about 0.0002% (that's two ten-thousandths of one percent -- a less than negligible figure). The same is true of Texas, where this type of voter fraud is almost non-existent. Before passing the new laws in Texas, the Republicans tried to find and prosecute some people for fraud but were unable to do so. I imagine the same thing that is true of Wisconsin and Texas is true of the other states who have passed this kind of ridiculous law.

It was never about voter fraud. It was about voter suppression. The Republicans knew that the people most affected by the new law would be the elderly, the minorities, and the young. And they also knew those are the most likely groups to vote for Democrats instead of Republicans.

The real voter fraud, the most dangerous kind of voter fraud to our electoral system, is not illegal voters -- it is voter suppression, and the Republicans are masters of that kind of voter fraud. I guess they figure if you can't convince a majority to vote for you, then you can win by keeping your opponents supporters from voting.

This was proven in a court of law recently in Maryland. A jury found Paul Schurick, the campaign manager of former Republican governor Robert L. Erlich Jr., guilty of voter fraud. Schurick had arranged for a robocall that targeted likely Democratic voters, telling them that the election was won and inferring there was no need for them to bother with going to vote. The problem with the call is that the polls were still open and no votes had been counted.

Schurick could get a sentence of 12 years , but most pundits don't think he'll actually go to prison. It is more likely that he'll get probation. And that's a shame, because what he did is extremely serious and strikes at the heart of our democratic system. A democratic system must be able to trust those who work in it, and when they are caught violating the rules the punishment should be severe. It should include at least some jail time.

This is not the first time either, that Republicans have been found to have committed voter fraud. In Las Vegas they hired a company to register new voters. That company then tore up the registrations of Democratic voters, and only turned in the registrations of Republicans. And earlier this year the Indiana Secretary of State, a Republican, was indicted on seven counts of voter fraud.

It's easy to see why Republicans are so worried about voter fraud. They have done it so much they find it hard to believe everyone else isn't doing it also.

Clinton Is Right About Voter Disenfranchisement

I have not always agreed with Bill Clinton. He is far too conservative for my taste and too willing to give in to the corporate interests that rule this country (to the detriment of most citizens). But he has recently been speaking out on the Republican efforts to disenfranchise many American voters, and on that issue he is absolutely correct.

The Republicans, under the guise of fighting voter fraud, have been passing new laws in many states -- laws that will result in many citizens being denied the right to vote. There is no evidence of widespread voter fraud and the Republicans know it. This was never meant to curb fraud. It is meant to keep people from voting -- people who probably wouldn't vote for Republicans.

Republicans can see this country's population trends as clearly as anyone else. The country is obviously going to have a majority composed of ethnic/racial minorities within a few decades. Instead of changing their bigoted policies to engage this coming minority, the Republicans have decided to try and restrict their ability to vote. They see this as their only hope of retaining political power.

Here are some of Bill Clinton's words in a speech at the annual Campus Progress convention. He believes the Republicans are creating a new version of "Jim Crow", and I agree with him.

I can’t help thinking, since we just celebrated the Fourth of July and we’re supposed to be a country dedicated to liberty, that one of the most pervasive political movements going on outside Washington today is the disciplined, passionate, determined effort of Republican governors and legislators to keep most of you from voting next time. There has never been in my lifetime, since we got rid of the poll tax and all the other Jim Crow burdens on voting, the determined effort to limit the franchise that we see today.

Getting rid of same-day registration. Some states getting rid of all advanced voting. Governor of Florida proposed to reverse his Republican predecessor’s signing of a bill that gave people the right to vote when they got out of prison and they’d finished they’re probation period, even if they didn’t have a pardon—that’s one of the most important things we can do. Why should we disenfranchise people forever once they pay their price? Cause most of them in Florida were African Americans and Hispanics and would tend to vote for Democrats, that’s why.

Why do we want to get rid of same day registration? Why has New Hampshire made it almost impossible for college students who come from other states but live in New Hampshire most of the year to vote there? Why is all this going on? This is not rocket science. They are trying to make the 2012 electorate look more like the 2010 electorate than the 2008 electorate.

This is a pernicious and vile effort by the Republicans. It is also anti-democratic and anti-American. A democracy such as ours is helped when as many citizens as possible exercise their right to vote -- not when those rights are restricted by unnecessary rules and regulations. The denial of the right to vote is the first step in the death of democracy.

Ronald McDonald Is A Republican ?

Well, no one can say the Republicans aren't trying every dirty trick in their repertoire to try and win the 2010 elections.   All across the country they have been piling lie upon lie as they campaign -- so many lies that I wonder if they even have a concept of what truth is.   In Houston they are putting out misleading political flyers and intimidating voters in minority precincts.

Now an Ohio Republican businessman has decided he can pressure his workers into voting for Republicans.   Paul Siegfried, owner of Siegfried Enterprises which owns some McDonald's restaurants in Canton, decided a little threat might make his restaurant employees vote the way he wanted them to vote -- for Republicans.   The McDonald's employees got the following insert in their pay envelopes:

I'm sure many right-wingers will view this as just a little harmless campaigning.   I don't, and neither does election law, which forbids companies from putting pressure on employees to vote a particular way.   And as precious as any job is in this economy, even a McDonald's job (where the pay and benefits are certainly nothing to brag about), to have an employer putting pressure on voting employees is just unconscionable.

At least one of the employees wasn't intimidated.   He gave the insert to an attorney, who forwarded it to the local authorities.   That was exactly what he should have done since the insert seems to be a clear violation of state law.   Here is how the Ohio law reads:

"No employer or his agent or a corporation shall print or authorize to be printed upon any pay envelopes any statements intended or calculated to influence the political action of his or its employees; or post or exhibit in the establishment or anywhere in or about the establishment any posters, placards, or hand bills containing any threat, notice, or information that if any particular candidate is elected or defeated work in the establishment will cease in whole or in part, or other threats expressed or implied, intended to influence the political opinions or votes of his or its employees.

Whoever violates this section is guilty of corrupt practices, and shall be punished by a fine of not less than five hundred nor more than one thousand dollars."

Now that it looks like he may get in trouble for his illegal campaigning, Siegfried has issued the traditional Republican non-apology apology.   He said,   "Distributing this communication was an error of judgement on my part.   Please know, it was never my intention to offend anyone.   For those that I have offended, I sincerely apologize."

General Manager for McDonald's Ohio region, Shirley Rogers Reece, said that the national chain had no knowledge of the illegal paycheck insert.   Then she went on to issue her own non-apology apology saying,   "While clearly this was poor judgement, we don't believe it was intended to offend anyone."

Obviously both Siegfried and Reece miss the whole point with their tepid attempts at an apology.   The point was not whether someone was offended or not (although they probably were).   The point is that the restaurant owner broke the law by trying to intimidate his employees into voting for Republicans, and that is far worse than being offensive -- especially in a representative democracy.

I have been a semi-regular customer of McDonald's for many years, but it will be a very long time before I will set foot in one again -- unless I hear a real apology from the corporate head office and get their assurance this will never happen again.

(NOTE -- the above picture is from the website thefunnyads.com.)

Perry Will Call Special Session

It looks like the Republicans in the Texas Senate are going to get what they wanted. A couple of days ago, the governor announced he will be calling a special session of the Texas Legislature. The session is necessary because the senate adjourned without approving legislation to keep the Department of Transportation (TxDOT), the Racing Commission and the Department of Insurance going until the legislature meets again in 2011.

As it stands, the three agencies will have to cease operations on September 1, 2010. The senate tried to blame members of the Texas House for the screw-up, but the House did pass resolutions that would have kept the agencies going for another two years. But rather than agree to the resolutions, the senate adjourned. Even the governor is not buying the senate excuse. He said he didn't know what the senate was doing on its last day, saying it was like watching an episode of Lost.

It's pretty obvious what the senate wanted though -- a special session. The Republican-dominated senate had passed a voter suppression bill (which they called voter ID). The bill would have forced voters to present a picture ID along with their voter certificate before they could vote. Republicans said it was to prevent voter fraud.

I don't know where they think this fraud is. Here in the Panhandle, only one case of voter fraud has been brought in the last few elections. That case turned out to be a mistake, and the DA had to drop the charge and apologize to the voter. It's the same all across the state. The Republicans keep claiming they want to prevent fraud, but they've been unable to prove a problem of fraudulent voting even exists in Texas.

The truth is they're not trying to prevent fraud, they're trying to suppress votes. Republicans got a good scare in 2008, when they came close to losing control of the Texas House (where there are 76 Republicans and 74 Democrats). If they don't do something, they will lose it in 2010. Now they could change and appeal to a wider cross-section of voters, but change is not something right-wingers even want to contemplate. So they have chosen to try and suppress Democratic votes.

They know that the poor and the elderly will be the most affected by their bill, and these are groups that are most likely to vote Democratic. If they can suppress those votes, they can keep the House in 2010.

The governor was asked if Voter ID will be considered in the special session, but he refused to say yes or no -- just that a special session would be called soon. I think we can count on the voter suppression bill once again being introduced.

It should be interesting. It will easily pass the senate as it did before. It is the House where the problem will lie, because as determined as Republicans are to suppress votes, the Democrats are just as determined to make it easy for all citizens to vote.

Democrats stopped the bill with delaying tactics in the regular session. Those same tactics won't work in a special session, but I'm sure the Democrats have some tricks up their sleeve. They may even refuse to show up, because the bill can't be passed without a quorum of members present. They used this tactic in the past to try and stop redistricting by going to Oklahoma.

Whatever happens, it should be interesting.

Voter Suppression From Amarillo

A few days before the election, there was a nasty e-mail making the rounds. It said, "Due to the expected large voter turnout, all Obama voters are requested to vote on Wednesday." The e-mail went all over the country and upset a lot of people. Yesterday, it was revealed that the e-mail originated right here in Amarillo, Texas.

Several people traced the e-mail back to it's original source, and found Amarillo farmer Tony Harper. Harper claims he wasn't the originator and just passed it on to a few friends and family members because he thought it was funny. He says the whole thing was just a joke.

Frankly, I don't believe him. When the FBI traces an e-mail back and says you are the source -- then you probably are. And while Harper may consider the e-mail to be just a good joke, it smells a lot more like an attempt to suppress Obama votes. If this cost even one person to lose their opportunity to vote, then it is real voter suppression and it's not a bit funny.

A couple of complaints have been filed against Harper, and he has been contacted by the FBI. They told him if even one voter was affected by the e-mail and didn't get to vote, then criminal charges could be filed. I think they should be filed anyway.

Nothing is more sacred in a democracy than the right to vote, and messing around with that right is certainly no joke. This is true regardless of the candidate or the political party. Maybe a large fine would bring that fact home to this idiot.