The New Republic

From the article: "According to Minnite, between 2002 and 2005 there was only one case of voter registration fraud and five cases of people voting twice. That’s a total of six cases within a three year span." Here in Seattle in 2007 seven Acorn members were charged for turning in more than 1800 phony voter registration forms. Dino Rossi lost in 2005, with the margin of error exceeding the margin of victory. He won the first two counts, and as the third count progressed, more and more votes were turning up for Christine Gregoire. Both sides submitted evidence that hundreds of felons votes. Rossi submitted evidence that felons in dem districts voted, and Gregoire submitted evidence that felons in rep districts voted. The judge found 1678 illegal votes, including 6 double votes and 19 dead people voting. If I understood what you wrote correctly (I'm somewhat suspect I did because the claim is so easily refuted)...then what the Brennen Center claims to have found is a joke in light of what Seattle experienced in 2004. How on earth could they claim to cover through 2005 and not note that a judge found nearly 2000 illegal votes and 20 votes by dead people in a washing election alone? And that the margin of error exceeded the margin of victory? Good grief. If the margin of error EVER exceeds the margin of victory, the entire election should be held again. And again. And again. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003808207_votefraud27m.html http://www.seattlepi.com/local/227307_judgerules06ww.html Strauss writes: "*Disclaimer: My father is a lawyer with a nonprofit that worked with ACORN, which has been the target of a lot of voter fraud claims. " Claims? You means claims, arrests and indictments by acorn employees for voter fraud (mostly registration)? Right?

- seattleeng

October 15, 2010 at 2:47am

What we often see here is a dispute over semantics. Voter fraud, where some one is illegally voting with the intention of changing the outcome of an election, is not the same thing as voting mistakes, registration error, etc. The Seattle news story makes that more or less clear, and the judge in the end tossed 4 votes out of 2.8 million cast, and tossed them not necesarily for fraud. Much was made of felons voting -- apparerently illegal in Washington -- but I would guess that it's a case of no one knowing or paying any attention to the rule, and in any event, the judge found that it didn't affect the result. (I recall a poll in 1972 showing the federal prison inmates favored Nixon over McGovern by roughly the margin Nixon won with. Perhaps the felons sensed a kindred spirit.) That is, how many felons -- people who've served their time, know they're not supposed to vote? And how many precinct election officials have access to prison records. None, I would guess. This is not voter fraud. In any event, the judge threw out 4 votes. Likewise, voter registration messiness is not voter fraud. Anyone familiar with referenda petition drives knows that you've got to get -- I forget -- 50% more signatures than necessary to overcome the problem of invalid signatures. People signing "Mickey Mouse;" people signing who are not registered voters; etc. This is true whether ACORN is conducting the drive, or the Chamber of Commerce is. It's a messy, untidy business, but it's not not voter fraud, it's just part of the way petition drives operate. The signature gatherers sign up whomever they can. If you need 100,000 signatures, of get 150,000. With voter registration drives, there's the same messiness. People register who are already registered. If the signature gatherer is being paid per signature, there's an incentive to sign up anybody, up to and including the Twelve Apostles and the Three Stooges. Doesn't mean they end up being registered, and certainly does not mean they end up voting. So yes, the idea of voter fraud is largely a phantom menace. Dan

- dbuck1

October 15, 2010 at 7:16am

The VOTER REGISTRATION FRAUD issue serves two simple purposes for THE REPUBLICANS. 1.) In close races, it offers a reason (outside the "will of the people") for the Republican candidate to have lost, at least in the minds of the 2.) It deligitamitizes the actions of the duely elected thereby increasing the passion of the opposition by the Republican base. In any really close race this will always be a tactic of the Republicans, at least until there is a sufficient price to pay for such a abomoination to our political process; such as the permanent loss of previously reliable Republican voters, such as in my case.

- e065702

October 15, 2010 at 8:00am

Another way to look at it. There are some 142,000,000 registered voters in the US. Every year 2,400,000 Americans die. Let's say, just for the heck of it, that half of those 2.4 million are registered voters. Therefore -- are you sitting down? -- every year we add 1.2 million deadpeople to the voter rolls. What a scandal. That's the kind of logic at play here. Zany numbers. Scare stories. Of course another way of looking at it is that registering to vote can kill you. (I'm beginning to sound like a weird hydrid of Glenn Beck and Ralph Nader.) Did you know that if you register to vote, you stand a 1% annual chance of dying? Dan

- dbuck1

October 15, 2010 at 8:08am

Dan, the margin of victory was 133 votes. The judge found there were 1678 illegal votes. These are facts determined by the judge. Thus, this election was most likely decided by illegal votes. There is not much to debate there. You can try to frame it as the number of illegal votes versus the number of legal votes. The percentage will always be small. Even in elections that were influenced by illegal votes. In the case of Bush/Gore in 2000, Bush won by 1784 votes. Thus, if Gore came up with 1785 votes, he could have reversed that election. In other words, out of 122M voters in 2000, it would have only taken 0.0014% to have voted illegally to flip that election-- a freaking national presidential election (and who knows, maybe it was flipped). Elections are always manipulated by razor thin margins applied in strategic areas. When you show very small percentages and try to convince people they don't matter, it's makes you look, uh, uninformed. In the case of Washington state, do you agree that the margin of error greatly exceeded the margin of victory? Do you agree this election was very likely decided by illegal votes?

- seattleeng

October 15, 2010 at 3:41pm

Seattleemg, The judge tossed 5 votes. And he determined "that the Republicans' claims of fraud were not supported by the evidence." Etc. The election was not, as you put it "most likely decided by illegal votes" because the only evidence introduced indicated that the (allegedly) illegal voters 100% for the losing Republican and Libertarian candidates. Amazingly, per the story, the Republicans "didn't submit any" direct evidence on fraud. They declined to interview the allegedly invalid felon voters. The Democrats interviewed five; four said they voted the Republican, Rossi, and one said he voted Libertarian. So the judge tossed those five votes, increasing the Democat's winning margin. Also, the judge determined that 745 felon voters came off the GOP list & 647 off the Democratic list. Not exactly sure what that means, but it supports the idea that felons tend to vote Republican. Heh. Per the story you linked to, the judge said that "'No evidence has been placed before the court to suggest fraud or intentional misconduct.'" Losing Republican candidate Rossi, who brought the suit, declined to appeal. So, to answer your two questions, no and no. Best, Dan

- dbuck1

October 15, 2010 at 5:18pm

I absolutely detest the current political climate. PS we have a heck of a choice here in Illinois (besides Rahm I mean:)

- Sophia

October 15, 2010 at 7:48pm

dbuck writes "The judge tossed 5 votes." He only tossed 5 because he made it clear his job was not to clean this up. He judge found 1678 illegal votes. The article states "In all, the judge identified 1,678 illegal votes: 745 from felons on the GOP list, 647 from felons on the Democrats' list, 175 mishandled provisional ballots in King County and 77 in Pierce County, six double votes and 19 ballots cast in the name of dead people." The judge also noted that the law prevented him from setting aside the election even if the margin of error exceeded the margin of victory. He then went on castigate the employees that worked on this election "It's inertia, it's selfishness, it's taking our paycheck but not doing the work, it's not caring about either our fellow workers or the public we're supposed to serve." Everything Dan Strauss claims a massive study did NOT find indeed happened in this one election in Washington State. In spades. And in a court room. For all to see. I'll leave it to you to decide if this is common place or not. I hope it isn't. But there shoudl be a law that says if the margin of victor is not some multiple of the margin of error, then the election is thrown out. Again: Number of illegal votes found by the judge: 1678, including 19 dead people Margin of victory: 133 votes Keep arguing this worked exactly as it should have and that there were no problems here. It makes you look really smart.

- seattleeng

October 16, 2010 at 12:21am

Elections rarely work exactly, nor are there never any problems. In the case at hand we're dealing with a state-wide race involving multiple local election authorities and 2.8 million votes cast in which one candidate won by 129 votes after a recount. But that's not the same thing as saying that that the victor was elected by fraud or even that he won unfairly. The judge did not determine that. Yes, people voted who may not have been eligible, but since it's a secret ballot, there's no way to determine how they voted. You can't overturn an election on the basis of the loser's lament, "we wuz robbed." Let's say, for purposes of discussion only, that in most elections 1/10 of one percent of the voters are for one reason or another ineligible to vote. (In the Washington election, that would be 2,800 voters.) You might be able to determine who those voters were, but not how they voted. But even some of the ineligibility questions don't lead to ineligibility conclusions. Dead people voting is often a case of the polling station clerk checking off the wrong name on the voter rolls. In other words, I go into vote, give my name/show an ID whatever. The clerk looks at the printout and, ditstracted, instead of checking my name off, checks off the name next to mine. Think of 2.8 million transctions in hundreds of polling places run by thousands of clerks, many of whom are elderly volunteers. Myriad possiblities fpr clerical errors. The only perfect solution -- one no one would stand for -- is to require that any election decided by a margin of X percent or less, would have to be rerun. Lots of luck with that. In any event, in the case at hand, based on what little evidence we have, the loser wuz not robbed. In fact, it's more likely that the loser would have lost by a larger margin had all the votes been tallied correctly. Maybe the winner should sue. Dan

- dbuck1

October 16, 2010 at 7:52am