Voter Fraud // Current

Obama connection to ACORN in his own words?

As more information about ACORN and its activities are exposed, the connection between... more

ladybugaz
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1 month ago
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2 comments

Karzai wins a majority in Afghan election amidst widescale reports of vote fraud

On Tuesday, the United Nations-backed commission that is the ultimate arbiter of the... more

BlueDotProdux
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2 months ago
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Scientists make voting machine turn against itself and steal votes!

Computer scientists demonstrated that criminals could hack an electronic voting... more

SushiBandit
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3 months ago
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4 comments

howobamagotelected.com

The reports speak for themselves.

Kylsport
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12 months ago
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The latest from the trenches from award-winning investigative journalist Greg Palast...

"Even as they drown in the anger of platoons of pissed-off voters, Republican... more

AndreaKnoll
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Virginia Tech students sent to vote at remote location

There are reports of voting problems all across the Commonwealth of Virginia this morning. Here's the New Republic's "The Plank" on what's been reported thus far:

The vigilant folks here at Election Protection headquarters are telling us that large numbers of Virginia voters have been turned away from the polls this morning. Several precincts opened late and quickly had ballot shortages. At some, not all the machines were working; at others, none of them were working. The group's legal volunteers are learning more by the minute as calls come in from voters--so take this all with a grain of salt for now--but word here is that more than a dozen precincts have been experiencing serious problems in the Commonwealth. The number of voters affected, according to a group spokesman, is "significant."

More than a thousand frustrated Virginians have called to complain this morning. One widely reported blunder: Workers at some of the state's malfunctioning precincts have been giving cleanly registered voters provisional ballots instead of paper ballots, most likely because they ran out of the paper ones. (Provisional ballots are meant for voters whose eligibility has been called into question.) "Over the last hour, we're continuing to get these problems in Virginia," says Jon Greenbaum, the coalition's legal director. And then there's this, from a Rock the Vote rep: The polling precinct for Virginia Tech students in Blacksburg was moved to a church that sits on an unmarked road six miles off campus. Better carpool, Hokies.

That news out of Blacksburg really sticks in the craw. Here's the specific details:

More than 5,600 people, mainly Virginia Tech students, are registered to vote at precinct E1 in Blacksburg, Virginia (Montgomery County). That number is nearly double what the state law allows for polling stations and the lack of an additional polling station is causing substantial delays. In addition, the polling place is 6.5 miles away from campus at a tiny church located off the main road. There is no street sign marking the turn off to the one lane road. There are 30 parking spots for the thousands of voters expected to turn up at precinct E1.

We tracked down the exact address of this polling place, thanks to the Collegiate Times: St. Michael's Lutheran Church, 2308 Merrimac Road. Here's where Google Maps approximates this location:There are reports of voting problems all across the Commonwealth of Virginia this... more

WhichWayIsUp
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1 year ago
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CNN Vote Fraud Collusion Caught On Tape!

Man on the street admits to CNN anchor that he’s voted “a couple times” today.... more

devo64
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1 year ago
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1 comment

Phony fliers tell Virginia Democrats to Vote on November 5th

In a rather sneaky, and underhanded, move, a man in Virginia passed out fliers... more

mario_a
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1 year ago
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"FIXING" BALLOTS IN FLORIDA FOR THOSE WHO MADE "MISTAKES" hmmmm

SUPERVISOR OF ELECTOINS SAYS HE IS FILLING OUT NEW BALLOTS FOR PEOPLE WHO MADE... more

flagirl777
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1 year ago
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Voter docs found on Tampa highway

TAMPA - Election Day isn't even here yet, but we already have our first voting... more

synclaire
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1 year ago
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Best Kept Secret of the 2008 Election

On election day top law firms are deploying 10,000 legal experts across the country on... more

URTEVE
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Voting Machine Glitches

"Eight years after Florida's hanging chads exasperated voters and helped usher in sweeping changes in voting technology, many election observers remain concerned about the accuracy of the electronic voting systems most Americans will use November 4.
Early voters cast ballots on touch-screen machines Wednesday in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Touch-screen machines can occasionally fail or register votes for unintended candidates. Optical-scan systems can have trouble reading paper ballots that are too long or marked with the wrong ink. At least one study suggests that electronic voting machines can be easily hacked.

And some 9 million voters, including many in the battleground states of Ohio and Florida, will use equipment that has changed since March, increasing concerns about errors next Tuesday.

"You can be almost certain that there will be irregularities in some places around the country," said Rep. Rush Holt, D-New Jersey. "The problem now is that roughly a third of voters nationwide will use unverifiable electronic machines. So if there are uncertainties, there will be no way to resolve them."

With early voting under way in 31 states, these problems have already surfaced. In recent weeks, voters in West Virginia, Colorado, Tennessee and Texas have reported that touch-screen machines registered their votes, at least initially, for the wrong candidate or party. Video Watch video about voting-machine concerns »
CNN Voter Hotline
If you have a problem voting or see a problem, call the CNN Voter Hotline at 1-877-GOCNN08 (1-877-462-6608); CNN will report on some of your calls and our partner, InfoVoter Technologies, can help get you in touch with your election board or find your voting location.

This scenario even turns up in Sunday's episode of "The Simpsons," already leaked on the Internet, in which Homer's electronic vote for Barack Obama is recorded for John McCain by a sinister machine that then devours him. Cast a vote with our interactive ballots »

"There are going to be places where voting machines break down. It happens every time there is an election," said Susan Greenhalgh, spokeswoman for Voter Action, a nonpartisan organization dedicated to integrity in elections. "We have to hope that there aren't problems with the accuracy."

For this presidential election, 55 percent of American voters are casting ballots via optical-scan systems, up from 49 percent two years ago. One-third of Americans are voting by electronic touch screen. The state of New York still votes largely by mechanical lever machines -- those curtained relics from the 1960s -- while several small counties in Maine and Vermont still use old-fashioned paper ballots, counted by hand.

And those infamous punch-card systems? They're still used in a handful of counties in Idaho, the last state in the nation to do so.

Some observers believe this patchwork quilt of electronic, mechanical and paper balloting from state to state -- even county to county -- makes it more difficult to regulate voting systems. According to a joint report released this month by three nonprofit democracy groups, including Common Cause, 22 states use electronic voting machines that produce no voter-verifiable paper record.

"It's a huge mess," Greenhalgh told CNN. "This is the most important fundamental characteristic of our country. It is our democracy ... and our votes need to be recorded and counted in a way we can trust.""Eight years after Florida's hanging chads exasperated voters and helped usher in... more

DeliaTheArtist
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How the 2008 Election Will Be Stolen in Florida

The good old boy network has found a way to steal the election here in Florida. I live... more

BuddyP
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1 year ago
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17 comments

Law Enforcement Used to Suppress the Vote

In 2008, Americans may once again be seeing law enforcement turned into a tool of voter suppression. Under the Voting Rights Act (VRA) and the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) it is illegal for any person "whether acting under color of law or otherwise," to intimidate, threaten, or coerce voters. In the past few weeks, however, partisan forces have manufactured hysteria around the myth of "voter fraud" that they have used to help goad law-enforcement into intimidation and politically motivated investigations into eligible voters.
This climate of suppression and intimidation is all the more troubling because it has happened before. The investigation into the firings of nine U.S. Attorneys revealed how trumped-up charges of "voter fraud" were used to pursue a cynical strategy of law enforcement intimidation designed to hamper voter registration efforts and suppress turnout at the polls.
New Mexico GOP Reportedly Investigating New Latino Voters
The day after GOP presidential candidate John McCain made public allegations about voter registration fraud, the New Mexico GOP held a press conference to present information on 10 voters they claimed voted illegally in the state primaries. Following the press conference ACORN made contact with eight of the ten voters named, and discovered that they were all legitimate voters.
Following this information, however, two of these voters have reportedly been harassed by private investigators. Guadalupe Bojorquez of Albuquerque said the private investigator who came to her home claimed to be working for the law firm of Pat Rogers, a GOP attorney who was one of the key players in the firing of U.S. Attorney David Iglesias for refusing to prosecute bogus "voter fraud" cases.
Overreaching Law Enforcement Investigations in Ohio
In Ohio, the Greene County sheriff announced that he was investigating hundreds of people who registered to vote and cast a ballot during Ohio's five-day window of same day registration and voting. Despite rulings from four different federal and state courts upholding the lawfulness of the five-day window, the County announced they were attempting to "determine whether there was any voter fraud or not," according to an Associated Press story. Following public outcry Greene County announced that that investigation had been cancelled.
Also in Ohio, Hamilton county prosecutor Joe Deters --- who is also local chair of the McCain-Palin campaign --- initiated a grand jury investigation and issued subpoenas for unredacted personal information on hundreds of voters who cast ballots during the five-day window. Citing unspecified allegations of "voter fraud" Deters took it upon himself to conduct some attempt to match these voters to government databases and investigate those he determined had problems. The Hamilton County election board says the complaints of fraud did not come from local election officials. In 2008, Americans may once again be seeing law enforcement turned into a tool of... more

BuddyP
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1 year ago
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Voter Fraud? No, Voter Suppression!

Why are we hearing so much about voter fraud and so little about election fraud? After all, the odds of someone voting fraudulently are about the same as those of an American being struck and killed by lightning.

A microscopic evaluation of election data in the 2004 gubernatorial election in Washington state revealed that voter fraud occurred approximately 0.0009 percent of the time. An analysis of the 2004 presidential election in Ohio revealed a voter fraud rate of 0.00004 percent.

In 1998, Allan J. Lichtman, a consultant on voting rights, was asked by the state of Maryland to investigate charges that the Republican candidate for governor lost because of some 6,000 fraudulent votes. He writes that he found “not a single fraudulent vote [among] the 1.4 million ballots cast in the election.”

A 2007 experts’ report to the federal Election Assistance Commission concluded that “false registration forms have not resulted in polling place fraud.” The Department of Justice, which according to the attorney general has “made enforcement of election fraud and corruption offenses a top priority,” convicted only 24 people between 2002 and 2005 for voting fraud, an average of eight people a year. And these convictions were of individuals guilty of themselves casting illegal votes, not of instigating widespread voting fraud.

On the other hand, evidence of what I will somewhat imprecisely call election fraud — voter suppression by election officials and state governments — is widespread and validated. “Tens of thousands of eligible voters in at least six swing states have been removed from the rolls or have been blocked from registering in ways that appear to violate federal law,” the New York Times recently concluded after its own investigation. The Times’ numbers don’t include efforts by state officials and private parties to discourage, intimidate or challenge eligible voters.

This is the type of voter fraud we should be hearing about. Why aren’t we? The principal reason may be explained in the title of one of the best reports on the subject, “The Politics of Voter Fraud” by Barnard Professor Lorraine C. Minnite.

Expanded voter rolls tend to favor Democrats. One reason is that voter-registration drives are usually conducted in minority and low-income neighborhoods and on campuses, areas that are likely to vote Democratic. Voter-suppression efforts, on the other hand, tend to favor Republicans because minorities, poor families and students will be least likely to overcome the new obstacles put in place.

Is this why in the third presidential debate, John McCain accused ACORN of being involved in voter fraud so massive that it “may be destroying the fabric of democracy” while not saying anything during his entire campaign about the far greater threat from widespread voter purging and voter-suppression initiatives?

Is this why the Department of Justice has rapidly launched a national investigation of ACORN, the nation’s largest grass-roots organization advocating for low- and moderate-income families, but has not begun to investigate the illegal activities by states and private parties to reduce voting turnout?

Raising the fear of individual voter fraud brings a short-term and a long-term advantage to those who would reduce the turnout of the disadvantaged and dispossessed. In the short term, it hobbles registration and turnout efforts. In the longer term, it helps to persuade state legislatures to pass laws that make it more difficult to vote.Why are we hearing so much about voter fraud and so little about election fraud? After... more

BuddyP
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1 year ago
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Millions not allowed to vote

Spencer Overton: We need an independent election commission; Is the fox guarding the... more

Vierotchka
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1 year ago
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Feds must modernize voter registration to end fraud | ajc.com

Blaming ACORN for our voter registration system is a classic failure of missing the forest for the trees. Amidst accusations of ACORN putting our democracy in jeopardy, few are asking why private groups are even in the business of voter registration drives. The answer is that the United States is one of the few democracies where the federal government doesn’t assume responsibility for establishing full and accurate voter rolls —- and it just isn’t working.

Each election cycle, scores of generally well-intentioned organizations and individuals register millions of new people to vote, and inevitably accusations of voter registration fraud —- often mistakenly termed “voter fraud” —- follow. Some canvassers submit fraudulent names for extra pay; this is what ACORN has been accused of. Many citizens submit forms with inaccurate information.

Although highly unlikely to impact the actual casting of votes, voter registration fraud is serious —- it wastes all-too-scarce resources of local election offices, balloons voter rolls with fake names and increases the odds of Election Day confusion. Ending voter registration fraud is a big reason for the government to modernize registration.

These problems are part of a much bigger failure in how we run elections. Nearly a third of eligible voters aren’t registered to vote and our turnout rates are among the lowest in the world. That’s why groups like ACORN have to pour resources into voter registration drives every four years instead of focusing on other means to empower people in their communities.

The problem is our “opt-in,” self-initiated voter registration system. Right now the onus is on citizens to update their information, ensure correct spelling and cancel old registrations when they move. Without a parent who votes or a motivated high school teacher handing out voter registration forms, many young people never register or learn the basics of participation —- as if preparation for citizenship weren’t an obvious goal of an effective public school system.

Low voter registration contributes directly to low voter turnout. Once registered, people are much more likely to vote in big elections. In 2004, the U.S. Census reported participation rates of more than 85 percent of registered voters. Four in five registered voters in the 18 to 24-year-old cohort showed up. But even 100 percent turnout of registered voters would leave us with lower turnout than most other well-established democracies.

At the same time, many people are on the rolls more than once and our rolls are cluttered with people who have died or moved. Alaska notoriously has more registered voters than eligible adults.

Implementing a few common sense reforms would go a long way in solving our voter registration problems and lessen the necessity of groups seeking to register so many new voters every four years.

One example is seeking to register every citizen before they reach voting age by following the lead of Hawaii and Florida in allowing 16-year-olds to register to vote, with their names automatically added to the voter rolls when they reach 18. This change would ideally be twinned with systematic registration of young people in high schools and at driver’s license agencies and “voter’s ed” classes on the mechanics of participation in communities. Other sensible proposals include Election Day registration and moving to making voter registration permanent through automatic updates of registration with changes of address. Blaming ACORN for our voter registration system is a classic failure of missing... more