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Fake IA voter gets an absentee ballot … in Rome

Can registration fraud turn into voter fraud? YES IT CAN?

By: Soren Dayton (Diary)  |  October 26th, 2008 at 11:30 AM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

A bunch of election fraud blogs have popped up in individual states. Here’s a great one from Iowa with a great story. In this case, fraudulent voter registration led to an absentee ballot being sent to one of the fake people … in Rome:

A concerned citizen from Sioux City, IA made a trip to her auditor’s office last week to inquire into some political mailings her family kept receiving. She discovered that several individuals unknown to her or her family had registered to vote using their address in 2004. Even more concerning is the fact that one of these folks, (Iowans love this word) Mr. David Loepp, had already requested and recieved his 2008 absentee ballot via international mail in ROME. Voter fraud in Iowa? Never!

Note that this fake person who doesn’t exist signed an request form for the ballot. Click through to see the application and see the signature.

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  • hunter

    They demanded voting convenience, and then undermined and road blocked ballot security.
    We have been played for fools.

    • bk

      That is about the number of students at Ohio State right?

  • ColoKid

    I know the folks :o ) there will not tolerate this kind of crap, and I’ll bet there will be very few such instances. Obama may carry the Hawkeye State, but the voting will be squeaky clean.

  • Tamblin

    Sure, of course. There’s a reason after all that voter registration fraud is illegal.

    But here’s the thing- is that type of thing an effective way to rig an election? Absolutely not.

    Just stop and think about the numbers involved. In Ohio alone, in 2004, you had about 5.5 million votes cast. In order to to rig the election through vote fraud you’d need to cast at least 1% of the vote to have any decent chance to control the outcome. As a matter of fact for Ohio 2004 it would have taken closer to 2% in order to flip the result. But let’s stick with 1% for this gedanken.

    That’s 55,000 votes to fraudulently cast. Let’s say, very conservatively, that it only takes a person 15 minutes to cast each fraudulent vote. That’s still almost 14,000 man hours of work. Don’t you think most campaign’s would give one of their testes to have 14,000 man hours of GOTV operations come election day?

    Not to mention 55,000 chances to get caught in a felony. And after all that it still would have failed to make a difference! Bush still would have won Ohio. All that precious time, all that crime, all that risk, and no benefit. Double the numbers above to actually succeed.

    And that’s just to rig one state.

    Now consider the ridiculousness of some of the fraudulent names submitted. Mickey Mouse. Famous sports stars. Muppets. Obviously hardened professional criminals, these guys. What are the odds that the tens of thousands of people you’d need to pull this scam off on any sort of scale would all stay mum on the operation?

    One of the main ways criminal operations get caught is because some idiot shoots their mouth off. Then when questioned they give up their co-conspirators. That’s how mob rings get broken. And yet ACORN has evidently shown immensely greater discipline than the La Cosa Nostra, all the while employing thousands of feckless college students.

    Quite the feat.

    The ACORN meme is about scapegoating a group that is legitimately sloppy and has a bad business model, as if they were some shadowy vote fraud masterminds. The meme simply doesn’t hold up to any serious logical scrutiny though.

  • Canthros
    1. Fraud is fraud. If they can’t register voters without committing fraud, they shouldn’t be doing it.
    2. Registration fraud is a necessary precondition of vote fraud. Vote fraud, even on a small scale, can be sufficient to tip close elections.

    ACORN is either incompetent or malicious, and should not be receiving federal funds to register voters either way. Either way, it doesn’t reflect well on Obama.

  • Tamblin

    You’re right as regards #1. ACORN should most certainly make changes. Specifically they should do away with paying per signature. Like any commission pay scheme it leads to abuse.

    As for 2 you’re dead wrong. The way real vote fraud is done doesn’t require voter registration fraud at all because it is manipulation of the counting output, not input.

    As for Washington- yes there will be the occasional race close enough that a few hundred votes can make the difference but that’s very hard to predict (polling doesn’t get that accurate).

  • David_Hinz

    And $450 million in questionable at best fund raising makes for quite a slush fund for all sorts of activities.

    Now consider the ridiculousness of some of the fraudulent names submitted. Mickey Mouse. Famous sports stars. Muppets.

    And by registering those ridiculous obviously fraudulent names — and wasting the national debate on such — how many John Smiths, Mike Johnsons, and Larry Sinclairs are going to be passed through without a close examination?

    There are three different ways of casting fraudulent ballots — all of which can and HAVE been used in the past.

    The first thing you need is a few precincts where all of the workers are from the same party. Precincts like this exist all over the country. Next, what you need is a ready list of people named John Smith, Mike Johnson and Larry Sinclair. Next you need a few vans of willing accomplices willing to be bussed from precinct to precinct to vote over and over.

    Absentee ballots are even easier. Motor-Voter is even easier. You don’t even need to be registered with Motor-Voter. All you need to do is SAY you are registered and they have to allow you to cast a provisional ballot. Those provisional ballots are SUPPOSED to be set aside, but once the workers in a precinct add those provisional ballots into the machines, there is no way to put the genie back into the bottle.

    And finally, after the end of the night, when the polls have all been closed, there is the matter of a list of voters who have not cast ballots. Often those voters end up voting. you figure it out.

    I saw an interesting report that 98% of eligible voters are registered to vote in Michigan. Who knew that Michigan voters were so civic minded? What a treasure trove of available names to mine at the end of the day.

    Why do you suppose that King County in WA never turns in its ballot figures until the rest of the state has been tabulated? This is called vote mining, and the citizens of WA state have been defrauded on numerous occasions.

    Ever hear about “Magic Ballot Box 13″?

    That one is an oldie I admit, but the 200+ votes discovered in ballot box 13 propelled Lyndon Johnson to victory in 1948. Why is it a “magic ballot box?” Because the votes in that ballot box were cast in alphabetical order.

    It ain’t new, its just more organized.

  • Canthros

    Registration fraud is a necessary precondition of a certain type of vote fraud. It’s conceivable that someone could also impersonate a legitimately registered voter at the poll, as well.

    Nonetheless, the remainder of my statement stands, and votes from fraudulent registrations are a factor in close races. Unless you really believe that the dead never, ever vote in elections.

  • Tamblin

    such methods are inefficiant to the point of ridiculousness. The time and effort required to cast enough fraudulent votes so as to give your side any significant advantage is prohibitive. Especially when changing a number in a spreadsheet is fast, hard to trace, and all too often easy.

    This really is borderline 9/11 truther territory. Regardless of your feelings about bush the fact remains that staging something like that would require an insane amount of effort for the pay off, and it would also require a conspiracy of incredibly disciplined silence in the face of thousands of felonies.

    Same thing with this ACORN meme. Regardless of how you feel about them the meme issimply not plausible in the real world. Bad fiction? Sure.

  • Vegas_Rick

    Maybe not a prerequisite, but certainly a facilitator.

    Is this the official troll day at RS?

  • janis

    we win, in which case November 5th is bound to be pretty busy.

  • Tamblin

    because people serious about vote fraud change cont totals. That doesn’t require and isn’t helped by fake registrations because you are talking about changing a number in a spreadsheet. Fake registrations just provides a paper trail for investigators to follow later.

    It’s like the difference between blue collar and white collar crime. Blue collar criminals are much more obvious, easier to catch, and hugely less harmful. White collar crime is where the real action is. The maffia doesn’t stick up banks, they write in electronic ledgers.

  • Vegas_Rick

    Your metaphors and examples leave one scratching their head.

    Are you involved in a voting office somewhere, or how do you claim to know anything?

    Regardless you?re not making a very clear case.

    I really don?t know about the subject and you?re sure failing to convince me.

  • Tamblin

    let me tease out the metaphor and see if it becomes clearer.

    Voter registration fraud is like blue collar crime. It’s messy, its easy to catch, it has very little pay off. Consequently the people who are serious criminals wouldn’t waste their time. It is akin to stickingup a 7-11. Sure that happens, sometimes stupid or desperate people will grab a gun and take a convenience store. It’s a crime and should be punished.

    But if you are looking to break open a crime syndicate you don’t go looking for small time robbers. Why? Because the real big league criminals wouldn’t waste their time on something so risky ad with so little pay off. They’ll make billions by hitting an enter key, and it’ll take years of DoJ investigations to even know a crime occurred much less who did it.

    People doing voter registration fraud are criminals, but they are the penny ante pissant types of criminals that are not connected to anything bigger.

    The people capable and willing to do real vote fraud have no more use for ACORN numbskulls than the Maffia does for some 7-11 burglar. It’s just not how the world works in real life.

  • David_Hinz

    because the 9-11 truther conspiracy is crazy, any widespread organized voter fraud is likewise crazy.

    which of the specific voter fraud cases I cited did not actually take place?

    a few hundred illegal votes here, a few hundred there, a few thousand in this city, a few there, and the next thing you know you have something akin to a Banana Republic. OR, are you suggesting that voter fraud does not take place in those other countries either? I’m sure Hugo Chavez won fair and square… NOT using the same tactics.

  • blogan

    15 minutes seems to relatively high. Honestly, a computer could generate the information. For registration, the person really just needs to sign. That takes what? 30 seconds maybe? And the actual vote? Maybe 5 seconds.