millergrovesue wrote:I researched voter fraud "statistics" a number of months ago and found similar results. Supposedly incidences of voter fraud are very rare. I find that hard to believe. Heck, if it was successful voter fraud it wouldn't be found our, right? How could there be statistics disproving the existence of something that wasn't detected?
I'm curious, why do you find that hard to believe? If it isn't happening then it isn't going to be discovered either. But, let's ask what constitutes "successful voter fraud" for openers. It seems the Right is focusing on making sure you are the person on the voter registration rolls through photo ID. So would any case of someone presenting someone else's voter registration card and voting would be "successful voter fraud". Does that make sense?
Okay, I see where that would be hard to detect unless the real person showed up and complained. What I don't see is why one would do this and what impact it might have on an election. Even in a close election 100s or 1000s of such cases would have to occur. Someone would have to organize and coordinate the effort. And how long could such an action be kept secret today given the large number of people that would be involved. Does that make sense? Now, if the argument is that large numbers of ILLEGAL voters are being used that would be fairly easy to discover by validating the voter rolls. Considering just these factors I think it is hard to argue that rampant voter fraud is going undiscovered.
The truth is that fraud AT the ballot box is just not something of any statistical significance in todays America. Now, there is something else that I like to characterize as vote fraud. Now, certain places in America have pretty well established histories of this sort of thing. What is vote fraud? It is the manipulation of vote counts after the polls close or away from the polls. Just off the top of my head I know LBJ, JFK and bush were involved in these activities. It is no joke that dead people put HFK over the top in at least Cook county. It can also consist of organized efforts to discourage or prevent certain specific groups from voting. This is what the voter ID laws are all about. Oh yes, you are I can easily understand the law and use the resources we have available to get the required ID. But, think about the older minority in front of you at the store struggling to use the card machine. Do you really think they can do all the things we take for granted? I think that is highly unlikely.
So, do you really think there is a lot of undetected voter fraud...or do you see that the claim is just another element of the Right's more extreme rhetoric run wild?