The New York Times editorial board points out just how phantasmagorical the idea of widespread voter fraud really is.
In Kansas, the secretary of state, Kris Kobach (who also wrote Arizona’s notorious anti-immigrant law), pushed for an ID law on the basis of a list of 221 reported instances of voter fraud in Kansas since 1997. Even if that were true, it would be an infinitesimal percentage of the votes cast during that period, but it is not true.
When The Wichita Eagle looked into the local cases on the list, the newspaper found that almost all were honest mistakes: a parent trying to vote for a student away at college, or signatures on mail-in ballots that didn’t precisely match those on file. In one case of supposed “fraud,” a confused non-citizen was asked at the motor vehicles bureau whether she wanted to fill out a voter registration form, and did so not realizing she was ineligible to vote.
Some of the desperate Republican attempts to keep college students from voting are almost comical in their transparent partisanship. No college ID card in Wisconsin meets the state’s new stringent requirements (as lawmakers knew full well), so the elections board proposed that colleges add stickers to the cards with expiration dates and signatures. Republican lawmakers protested that the stickers would lead to -- yes, voter fraud.
And Wisconsin Republicans have the oddest rationale for their actions. When confronted with all the facts showing that there is no widespread voter fraud and their own inability come up with just one case where fraud changed the election results, they say it doesn't matter. What's important is that people have "faith in elections." Even if there isn't any widespread fraud, people believe there is (wonder where they got that idea?). And it's important -- for reasons that aren't immediately obvious or even logical -- that we address those imaginary concerns. Never mind that it's going to cost the state $7.5 million to assure everyone that there aren't monsters hiding under their bed. It's important that people feel good about elections, even if the concerns they have are fantasy-based.
Add to this the fact that -- as I've pointed out before -- people have a lot more reason to blame Republicans for casting doubt on elections and you start to see an extremely pointless endeavor from any perspective other than just suppressing the vote. Voter ID has been called a solution in search of a problem. In fact, a problem exists -- elections riddled with corruption and a lack of transparency -- but Republicans don't want to deal with that, because it works to their advantage.
Meanwhile, the Brennan Center for Justice has released a report showing that new voting restrictions nationwide "could make it significantly harder for more than five million eligible voters to cast ballots in 2012." Five million legitimate votes are a lot to sacrifice to salve a paranoid populace's fear of a non-existent crisis of voter fraud. Republicans argue that citizens shouldn't have to worry about their votes being "cancelled out" by illegitimate voters -- apparently, by making sure that many have no votes to cancel out.
"It’s arguably the nation’s most important political scandal," writes Steve Benen, "and most of the country has never heard a word about it." I couldn't agree more. There are few things more unamerican than taking votes away from legitimate voters. They may wear those stupid little lapel pins and pledge allegiance and wave the flag, but Republicans -- in this instance at least -- can be shown to have no respect for American values. Worse, by undoing democracy, they take away the very foundation of the American political system -- a "government of the people, by the people, for the people."
A Republican came up with that phrase. How far that party has strayed.
-Wisco
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Brittanicus 84p · 704 weeks ago
Obama’s main players like Eric Holder and the Dept of IN-Justice are resolute in secret situations as selectivity in deportations. Just because an illegal alien has no heinous criminal record, you could actually walk free? This is not how our immigration laws are written? You enter America in violation of the law, you should be deported. There are very few mitigating circumstances. This is particularly wrong when thousands of legitimate new immigrants must wait their turn, waiting patiently for years. His executive decisions just draw thousands of more foreigners, into our nation looking for free handouts. The--Instant--citizenship for babies, under the present 14th amendment is a twisted, expensive situation that is just part of the $113 billion a year paid out in welfare entitlements. Adding California’s ‘Dream Act” further is yet another windfall for the 20 million plus foreigners, who have settled here in the US. This is unacceptable to the ordinary American people, who seem to being placed secondary to these foreign nationals.
The TEA PARTY is not defined by the GOP RINO’s that are the prominent politic of the party proper. The TEA PARTY is of a different breed that believes in a moderate government, with less intervention in our daily lives. The TEA PARTY is an overhaul of our political system, rampant with corruption and greed, that will overturn the tax code, that—only—47 percent of America pays, with far too many exceptions, loopholes and subsidies. Businessman Herman Cain’s plan of a 9-9-9 tax seems perfectly feasible where everybody pays. By now everybody has heard of Farmers complaints that their crops are dying in the fields, especial the tomato growers in Alabama? What hasn’t been passed on to the general public as admitted in farmers interviews with the Huntsville Times, that they couldn’t locate anybody to hire that was legally here. They the truth came out in the interviews, which they hadn’t even looked for workers at the employment office or advertised in the local press.
One farmer was offered free advertising by a community radio station, but that individual refused. According to the source some farmers were only paying illegal aliens $2.00 a box, but sold their tomatoes for $10.00 a box. My guess it’s probably this same greedy profit margin across the United States? Something is definitely wrong with this picture. Adding insult to injury the farmers were clearing over $200.000 in profit. Then incredulously the farmers and the big agricultural concerns give no benefits to their workers, so not only do the taxpayers have to pay for hospital visits, from the flue to a serious injury; for the whole family as well. Then the children have free education, thanks to the gullible American taxpayer. I am sure illegal aliens and taxpayers are exploited in any other state, in California for sure. The coastal state has one of the massive growing systems throughout this nation, and greedy farmers pay little for the work, placing the whole weight of their illegal aliens living here on the taxpayers. Internal ICE agents do not have the manpower to raid every despicable farm owners acreage, but this nefarious situation is sure to be prevalent everywhere.
If you haven’t really noticed where ICE agents have raided businesses annually--from meat packing plants, carpet warehouses, restaurant chains, supermarkets, hotels, construction sites, companies have quickly advertised from new workers as the illegal aliens not apprehended, have fled. Within a few days there are new lines of potential lawful labor of black, white, Hispanic gender waiting for the chance of a job. A chicken processing plant in Albertville, Alabama hired 125 LEGAL employees this week, to replace the 125 illegal aliens that left their jobs and fled the state—this just informs you that ICE enforcement is working. Contact your own local Senator or Representative or federal politician at 202-224-3121 and insist on E-Verify, “LEGAL WORKFORCE ACT” (H.R. 2885.) HELP THE WORKING AMERICAN AND STOP THESE TRAVESTIES OF OUR LAWS.
One Old Vet saying, “Stand next to me and you’ll never stand alone.”
MY EARLIER BLOGS: http://brittanicus-enoughisenough.blogspot.com
Brittanicus 84p · 704 weeks ago
Adverse politicians to this 'Dream Act' law stated, that it will further attract millions more foreign nationals, across the state border. California--A far left Liberal state and identified as a Sanctuary State, will soon be very much aware of not only more people pouring through the border or flying into LAX international air terminal. But hundreds of thousands, may be millions will skirt immigration laws and illegal alien families will further collapse any chance of California outgrowing their financial insolvency, as scatterings from the new enforcement policing laws enacted currently in Alabama, Arizona, Georgia and very soon arrive in that state. Jerry Brown will have to face the voters in the future, when the reckoning comes? But then Jerry Brown and his minions in the state capitol of Sacramento is immersed in Liberal doctrines, that's why the Golden State has massive welfare problems.
There is a grading system for immigration records for each member of the GOP contenders for President and by reading this chart at NumbersUSA, you can judge for yourself, who clearly has the best evaluation of working for the American people and not the special interest lobbyists. Rick Perry, former Texas governor has poor results and the only personages who show great promise is Bachmann, Cain, Romney, with the rest of the pack trailing behind. Rick Perry however did try to pass a Voter ID law, but it was lost in a filibuster by the Democrats. The left will do anything to alter the direction of close elections—even to turning a blind eye to illegal aliens voting and destroying the integrity of citizens voting. The ACORN organization is supposedly dismantled by Congress, but this is misleading and we must be very vigilant in the 2012 election. Originally the voter canvassing business had hired a present president Obama in its infancy. In the years before
It was finally revealed by 12 prosecuting state attorneys, they were filing hundreds of thousands of fraudulent voting applications.
When America is trying to overcome the 14 Trillion dollar federal deficit, we cannot afford to keep subsidizing the rest of the world’s poor. In fact the daily quota of illegal aliens who slip past our fence, just adds to the poverty already spreading here. Much of that poverty is brought into our nation, by these very individual, that ICE and the Border Patrol try to keep out.
YOU ARE THE VOTERS AND YOU CAN STOP THE MERCILESS INTIMIDATION OF ARIZONA, ALABAMA, GEORGIA AND OTHER STATES THAT UNITE?
The agenda of the U.S. Government have cultivated this mess over thirty years, but the major dilemma came after the 1986 Immigration Control and reform Act. Now that Governor Brown has signed into law the state-only ’Dream Act' he has assured illegal immigrants will get--public money. Whether they get tuition money from Taxpayers, they are still illegal aliens and under the new Lamar Smith's E-Very bill, their illegal parents will have to self deported, once they find jobs are no longer available to them. This is because “LEGAL WORKFORCE ACT” (H.R. 2885) after passage, will be a mandatory deterrent, to rid foreigners taking jobs from Americans workers. Corporations, businesses--large or small, will be held accountable, specifically under the growing nationwide influence of the TEA PARTY.
America always desires professional highly-skilled occupations, who will not become a taxpayers liability? But what is happening is greedy companies using less than honest attorneys to fill in the paperwork for second-rate workers, who definitely don’t fill the requirements of the law, but are in truth are fraudulent discount labor. However bucketing through our mostly open borders are—ECONOMIC—illegal aliens that is just more profit for thousands of undaunted companies that hire them and end up as public welfare charges.
GriperBlade 70p · 704 weeks ago