Yeah, and he did not have sexual relations with that woman, either.
Mississippi’s voter situation is hard to believe. Places like Madison County have over 123% more registered voters than people over the age of 18.
“It is terrible,” [Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann] says. “Combined with the fact that we don’t have voter ID in Mississippi, anybody can show up at any poll that happens to know the people who have left town or died — and go vote for them.”
“We have people who registered in 1965 who have never voted,” she says. “We have 486 people (registered who are) over 105.”
Hosemann says 190,000 new voters have registered for this election and he believes the turnout will be historic.
Oh, it will he historic, alright – a historic number of dead people will be voting this year.
Despite knowledge of the fraud, nothing can be done. Law prevents a purge of voter rolls within 90 days of a federal election.
Hat tip: P.U.M.A., who thinks the fraud was working in Obama’s favor in the primary. Obama won Mississippi with 61% of the votes.
In case you didn’t know, PUMA means Party Unity My A**, and refers to a Hillary Clinton supporter who is not voting for Barack Obama.
October 30th, 2008 at 2:27 pm
“Voter fraud is rare in the United States, according to a 2007 report by the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law. Based on reviews of voter fraud claims at the federal and state level, the center’s report asserted most problems were caused by things like technological glitches, clerical errors or mistakes made by voters and by election officials.
‘It is more likely that an individual will be struck by lightning than he will impersonate another voter at the polls,’ the report said.”
There’s um, kind of big difference between voter registration “fraud” and actual voter fraud. One’s a felony, the other is not. Betcha can’t guess which one, though.
I can understand that there might be some issue with the voting registration process – many of the voting rolls are still kept by each town and often have spelling errors, incorrect or outdated information and the like – but to suggest that the election is being stolen is desperation at best. If I had to guess, I’d say most of these people are still stuck somewhere between anger and denial.
I realize that Delbert is a Republican, but maybe his energy would be better suited trying to encourage people to vote (as Gov. Crist did in Florida) or perhaps preparing an effort to catch people who do commit voter fraud…instead of waving his hands in the air wildly about some unseen menace that will eat us all.
October 30th, 2008 at 8:52 pm
What is making me sicker than the registration fraud is the damned excuses the leftist’s have for ignoring it. This is a national disgrace and it needs to be stopped. The fact that the left is willing to ignore it because it may help them politically speaks volumes about their character.
October 31st, 2008 at 6:45 am
Okay … from Charity’s link: “the purge cannot take place within 90 days of a federal election”.
Having followed the issue of registration and vote fraud for a long, long time I offer the following two points:
1) It would be interesting to see how accurate the numbers being used to claim “Places like Madison County have over 123% more registered voters than people over the age of 18.”
Got that? That sentence is claiming a voter registration rate of 223% … that is what “123% more than” means.
Okay, let’s assume what was really meant was 123% voter registration rate (ie. 23% more than), and let’s assume sloppy wording is a reflection of sloppy counting and investigation. What numbers are they using and where did they come from?
Obviously there are dead people and folks who have moved and folks who just haven’t voted “since 1965″. That doesn’t mean fraud of any type, that simply means names have not been struck off the roles.
2) If folks are so all fired up about voter registration roles, why does this crop up just before a major election? Why does it crop up within a time frame the average Jane and John Doe can’t react within quick enough to fix their voting situation?
“Sue Sautermeister is working hard in the First District of Madison County to start a purging of the voter rolls as soon after the election as possible. She has file drawers full of names of people who haven’t voted in years and are known to be dead.”
Good on you, Ms Sautermeister … that’s when purging should be done.
This whole issue of registration fraud leading to upset elections is a red herring and designed to depress voter turnout (ie. deprive you and me of our voting rights).
October 31st, 2008 at 9:44 am
“and let’s assume sloppy wording is a reflection of sloppy counting and investigation”
No, let’s assume the sloppy wording is a reflection of the sorry state of both journalism and math education in America.
Those were the words of the reporter. Being sort of a math nerd, I notice math errors in news stories frequently. It has no bearing on the counting or investigation.
I agree, though, that the purging cannot be done this late in the game without the risk of voter disenfranchisement, so we are stuck with it.
I think the Guinness Book of World Records people need to get to that place with almost 500 people over 105, though! Wow! That’s got to be a record.
October 31st, 2008 at 10:33 am
But Charity, you’re in good part relying on that sentence to present your point. So who’s at fault … doesn’t really matter, does it? The point being that the story becomes suspect very quickly, and then we find out towards the end the extra voters may not be anything more nefarious than names of folks who have died or moved elsewhere … folks who won’t be casting ballots.
October 31st, 2008 at 12:51 pm
Here you go. If it’s a problem, accept the solution!
“The solution is to take the job of voter registration for federal elections out of the hands of third parties (and out of the hands of the counties and states) and give it to the federal government. The Constitution grants Congress wide authority over congressional elections. The next president should propose legislation to have the Census Bureau, when it conducts the 2010 census, also register all eligible voters who wish to be registered for future federal elections. High-school seniors could be signed up as well so that they would be registered to vote on their 18th birthday. When people submit change-of-address cards to the post office, election officials would also change their registration information.
This change would eliminate most voter registration fraud. Government employees would not have an incentive to pad registration lists with additional people in order to keep their jobs. The system would also eliminate the need for matches between state databases, a problem that has proved so troublesome because of the bad quality of the data. The federal government could assign each person a unique voter-identification number, which would remain the same regardless of where the voter moves. The unique ID would prevent people from voting in two jurisdictions, such as snowbirds who might be tempted to vote in Florida and New York. States would not have to use the system for their state and local elections, but most would choose to do so because of the cost savings.”
October 31st, 2008 at 1:01 pm
Leigh, I think that sounds like it would be a good idea.
October 31st, 2008 at 1:02 pm
Rama, I think the point is that someone can come in and vote using the name of a person who is dead or moved. There are no safeguards against that.
October 31st, 2008 at 3:13 pm
The more I think about it, although I like the idea of centralized voter registration for federal elections, I oppose the creation of more federal bureaucracy. In order to support this, we would need to cut something else. I vote for the Department of Education.
November 1st, 2008 at 5:22 am
Yeah … what we need … big centralized government controlling who does and doesn’t get to vote on election day. How about we simply expect our various State SoC’s do their job in an honest and transparent manner … that asking too much?
Oh, and unique IDs? Remember the Social Security number? The number that politicians swore would never be used for anything but Social Security access?
Nothing here a little honest and open government can’t solve.
And Charity, you forgot to tell me how many times in recent years we’ve seen actual voter fraud at the polls … maybe because it’s a below insubstantial number?
November 1st, 2008 at 8:22 am
Meh. All you’re doing is heaping another responsibility onto the Census Bureau. Much like how Gov. Douglas increases more work onto less people at the AOT – while simultaneously claiming that there will be no reduction in public services…we’ll just work smarter! – the Federal Government can do the same.
The title on that article I quoted was from slate.com – “If we can nationalize banks, why not our voting process?”
Come on Rama, if we can trust one man to hand out 1.4 trillion dollars in unsecured loans to the banks (and counting), I’m sure we can fathom the trust for them to keep a database, right?