The Great “Voter Fraud” Scam

October 28, 2012

This may have escaped your notice, but the U.S. is currently in the midst of a presidential campaign season. If you’ve hard anything about it at all, you’ve probably heard a great deal about voter fraud. And if you’ve heard anything about voter fraud, you’ve heard that it’s Democratic voters who do it, and that they do it in multitudes, and that it frequently produces stolen elections. And if you’ve heard all of this, you’ve heard the sound of a huge barge load of bullshit being dumped on your head.

How big a problem is voter fraud? Mother Jones notes that UFO sightings are more common. And that’s not just an expression; it’s literally true. In fact, there are far, far more UFO sightings than cases of voter fraud: Mother Jones’ numbers for the period from 2000 to 2010 are: 47,000 UFO sightings compared to 13 cases of  verified voter fraud. It would make more sense for the media to focus on preventing that kind of alien from voting.

News21 comes up with a slightly different but compatible total for the same period: 10 instances of “substantiated in-person” voter fraud confirmed out of 2068 alleged cases. Whatever the exact figure, everyone who examines the facts closely enough arrives at the same conclusion: voter fraud is extremely rare, hardly a drop in the ocean. Yet the hype about it is a tsunami.

Mother Jones also observes that:

A 2005 report by the American Center for Voting Rights claimed there were more than 100 cases of voter fraud involving 300,000 votes in 2004. A review of the charges turned up only 185 votes that were even potentially fraudulent.

Note that word potentially. And that:

Last December, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus declared that Wisconsin is “absolutely riddled with voter fraud.” In fact, the state’s voter fraud rate in 2004 was 0.0002 percent—just 7 votes.

The Brennan Center for Justice conducted an analysis of purported voter fraud and found that:

Many vivid anecdotes of purported voter fraud have been proven false or do not demonstrate fraud. Although there are a few scattered instances of real voter fraud, many of the vivid anecdotes cited in accounts of voter fraud have been proven false or vastly overstated. In Missouri in 2000, for example, the Secretary of State claimed that 79 voters were registered with addresses at vacant lots, but subsequent investigation revealed that the lots in question actually housed valid and legitimate residences. Similarly, a 1995 investigation into votes allegedly cast in Baltimore by deceased voters and those with disenfranchising felony convictions revealed that the voters in question were both alive and felony-free.

The thing is, those “vivid anecdotes” make the headlines, over and over and over again, while the inevitable debunking of them does not.  Consequently, the astronomically overinflated stories of voter fraud stay implanted on the impressionable public brain much more vibrantly and permanently than the facts. It’s the old thing about a lie being halfway around the world before the truth even gets its shoes on.

Pardon me while I dig up ACORN.

Take the intensive smear campaign against ACORN. One poll revealed that 26 percent of all Americans and 52 percent of Republicans believed the community activist organization “stole” the 2008 election for Obama. More astoundingly, a poll taken last year indicated that 25 percent of Republicans believed it also would steal the 2012 election — even though the organization already was defunct for more than one year!

Smashing ACORN had long been a goal of right-wing activists for a very good reason: it had a long history of registering the “wrong” kind of voters (i.e., those who vote Democratic), which apparently is the most egregious offense of all. A young would-be muckraker named James O’Keefe helped the cause tremendously with his fraudulently edited videos about ACORN.

Professor Peter Dreier of Occidental College studied the media coverage of ACORN and reported among other things that:

Although ACORN is involved in many community activities around the country, including efforts to improve housing, wages, access to credit, and public education, the dominant story frame about ACORN was “voter fraud.” The “voter fraud” frame appeared in 55% of the 647 news stories about the community organization in 15 mainstream news organizations during 2007 and 2008. The news media stories about ACORN were overwhelmingly negative, reporting allegations by Republicans and conservatives.

The media also failed to distinguish allegations of voter registration problems from allegations of actual voting irregularities. They also failed to distinguish between allegations of wrongdoing and actual wrongdoing. For example:

82.8% of the stories about ACORN’s alleged involvement in voter fraud failed to mention that actual voter fraud is very rare (only 17.2% did mention it)

80.3% of the stories about ACORN’s alleged involvement in voter fraud failed to mention that ACORN was reporting registration irregularities to authorities, as required to do by law.

85.1% of the stories about ACORN’s alleged involvement in voter fraud failed to note that ACORN was acting to stop incidents of registration problems by its (mostly temporary) employees when it became aware of these problems.

95.8% of the stories about ACORN’s alleged involvement in voter fraud failed to provide deeper context, especially efforts by Republican Party officials to use allegations of “voter fraud” to dampen voting by low‐income and minority Americans, including the firing of U.S. Attorneys who refused to cooperate with the politicization of voter fraud accusations – firings that ultimately led to the resignation of U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

So, to summarize the case against ACORN: the real fraud was not voter fraud, but registration fraud. It was not committed by ACORN,  but against ACORN by (a few of) its workers. They were not trying to stuff the ballot box, but to stuff their own pockets. ACORN did, as claimed by its critics, turn in many phony names — because it was required to do so by law. ACORN itself flagged these for scrutiny; and ironically, if not for its efforts to prevent voter fraud, it might not have been accused of voter fraud. Thorough investigation cleared the organization of any wrongdoing.  Yet few media reports noted these facts. Must be that old “liberal bias” in the media at work again, eh? Indeed, by the time the truth about the “scandal” surfaced, the damage already had been done by O’Keefe, Breitbart, and the other usual suspects.

Give him an inch…

O’Keefe, by the way, is still releasing fraudulently edited videos that purport to show Democratic voter fraud. In his most recent, he solemnly proclaims in the intro that he is about to reveal proof of voter fraud that many deny even exists. Ah, Jimmy boy, a brazen double lie is hardly an auspicious beginning for what is intended to be an earth-shaking expose. Your latest little heavily doctored cinematic jewel only proves that you still know how to be dishonest, manipulative and self-serving. And it appears that plague of “liberal” malfeasance you’ve devoted your life to exposing is in fact so rare that you have to manufacture it with entrapment and deceptive editing. Secretly film a Democrat dumb enough to humor (while also gently discouraging) what appears to be a persistent wacko intent on cheating,  then slice and dice the footage to perfection and, presto, you have a new masterpiece, certain to bring you more limelight, that “proves” one Democrat is dishonest and therefore they all must be.  And it isn’t that people are claiming fraud never happens. They’re just claiming that it’s a tiny gnat of a problem that does not in any way justify the parade of steamrollers being dispatched to squash it, in the form of intrusive legislation concocted by the champions of “limited government”.

Sure, voter fraud sometimes happens. As a former poll worker myself, I can assure you that it’s extremely difficult to pull off, but it still does occur occasionally. Sometimes the culprits are even high-profile individuals like this gang:

The evidence is overwhelming that each of these characters committed in-person voter fraud. Yet the media and the right-wing hacks don’t seem to be too interested in investigating. Wonder why? (Hint: check their party affiliation.) Clearly yet another case of “liberal bias” in the media. These are just a few of the apparent and confirmed cases of voter fraud committed by Republicans that somehow consistently slide under the radar of the librulmedia. By the way, none of these apparently fraudulent acts would have been prevented by the voter ID laws that Republicans are touting as the panacea.

Paltry affliction, potent medicine

Yet more than 30 states have passed tougher new voter ID laws. Why? Well, to answer that question, perhaps  you only have to look at who is behind them: namely, Republicans and other assorted right-wingers. Always. In every case. Al Franken, now a senator from Minnesota, once commented to the effect that Democrats try to win elections by getting people to vote, while Republicans try to win by preventing people from voting. Ah, come off it Al; surely all these voter ID laws aren’t just an effort to win at any cost, are they?

Hmmm…. Go back to 2000.  Months before the election, a purge of voters who were allegedly ex-felons falsely eliminated thousands of likely Gore voters who were perfectly qualified to cast ballots. (Some of these alleged felons were listed as having committed their alleged crimes on some date in the future!)  Bush’s official margin of “victory” in the state was 537. The purge was orchestrated by the state’s governor, who just happened to be Bush’s brother, and its secretary of state, who just happened to be the local chair of his campaign. All just coincidence, I’m sure. But that fraudulent purge coincidentally paid enormous dividends to the GOP, who professed to have executed it in order to  prevent fraud.

Ten states have passed voter ID laws that place a disproportionate burden — in terms of money, time, and access — upon minorities and low income citizens who — whaddaya know — vote overwhelmingly Democratic. In all ten of these states, both the legislatures and the governorships are in the hands of — whaddaya know — Republicans.  All just coincidence, no doubt.

Pennsylvania passed a new voter ID law that, before it was halted by a judge, would have disenfranchised more than 750,000 voters. The vast majority of them would have been Democratic voters. Just coincidence, to be sure.  In speaking of the law, the state’s House Majority Leader, Mike Turzai, commented that it “is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania”.  He was just joking, wasn’t he?

In Nevada, a registration worker was told that he wouldn’t be paid for signing up Democrats. This appears to be part of a growing national strategy by Republicans, often involving fake “surveys” to screen out Democrats.  In Virginia, a man who was caught tossing bags of completed voter registration forms into a dumpster turned out to be (surprise) working for the GOP. All just coincidence, absolutely.

In Arizona, voter registration cards in Spanish were mailed out with the wrong election date listed. In Ohio, mailers in one county listed both the wrong date and the wrong place. Republicans were behind both mailings. Just coincidence, naturally. In Arizona, it happened in Maricopa county, which has produced legislation aimed at discriminating against Hispanics under the pretext of fighting illegal immigration. Hispanics are much more likely to vote for Obama. Just one coincidence after another.

Additionally, there are widespread problems with electronic voting machines, which — except for the occasional very minor glitches that temporarily benefit Democrats before they are caught and corrected — have a consistent habit of counting more Republican votes than Democratic, sometimes very suspiciously so. The companies that supply these machines are all owned by individuals who are very active in supporting GOP candidates. Gotta be mere coincidence. Before the 2004 election, in which Diebold’s voting machines were quite instrumental, its Ohio-based chief executive, Wally O’Dell, declared, ”I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year.” Coincidentally, he did deliver, and Ohio was the pivotal state. Coincidentally, it very well could be again this year. (A rumor that Mitt Romney’s son owns voting machines in Ohio is false, though there are coincidentally some interesting connections.)

In short, if the media wanted to cover highly suspicious election irregularities that could make the difference — and indeed already have made a difference in at least on presidential election — they would have plenty of stories to cover. Trouble is, these stories all suggest vote suppression, tampering and other underhanded shenanigans on the part of Republicans, which doesn’t quite fit the narrative of Democrats stealing elections by getting too many people to vote. So instead we have a media obsession with scattered instances of possible fraud that have never had an impact on an election’s outcome. As usual, the right-wing propagandists have done their job extremely well.

Leave a Comment » | Media, Myths, Politics | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by P.O.P.

The Media Role in Bush Vs. Gore, Part 3: What They Ignored

December 30, 2010

At 2:16 a.m. On Nov. 8, 2000, while the results in Florida were still very much in the air, Fox commentator John Ellis officially called the presidential election in favor of his cousin, George W. Bush. And since Fox was the top-rated “news” network in the country, the other networks sheepishly but promptly followed its lead. At CBS, Dan Rather proclaimed. “Sip it, savor it, cup it, photostat it, underline it in red, press it in a book, put it in an album, hang it on the wall — George W. Bush is the next president of the United States.” Thus, Al Gore was immediately cast as the disputant, the spoilsport, the sore loser in the recount and legal tangles that followed; and given that he’d already been well established as a “liar”, any attempt that he made to obtain a more accurate vote tally could easily be spun as “trying to steal the election”. He was on the ropes, and he never got off.

The Bush team made yet another shrewd move by enlisting some GOP heavy hitters such as former Senator Bob Dole, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf and former Secretary of State James Baker, to present Dubya’s case to the public – vilifying Gore while giving the impression that Bush was calmly twiddling his thumbs above the fray. In truth, even while Team Bush was demonizing Gore for pursuing a recount in a state with a razor-thin edge, they were quietly seeking their own recount in New Mexico, which had gone to Gore by a larger margin. The media didn’t consider this newsworthy.

One thing Gore did was to challenge a block of 680 overseas ballots that were delivered after the deadline, and by state law should have been disqualified, but were counted anyway – after intense pressure from Team Bush, and a memo from Florida Secretary of State (and co-chair of the Bush campaign) Katherine Harris instructing election officials to disregard the time and date requirements. Of these ballots, 630 went to Bush, for a net gain of 580. (Did we mention that his official margin of victory was 537? And did we mention that in counties Gore carried, only 20% of absentee ballots with unclear postmarks were counted, while in those Bush carried 60% were? Sorry, not newsworthy.). But not to worry, up steps James Baker to the plate, wringing his hands over how horrible it is that Gore should want to toss out “military” ballots and show such disregard for the nation’s military – in which Gore had served more recently than Baker. Never mind that only a portion of these ballots were indeed cast by military personnel. Gore knew a potential PR disaster when he saw one, and backed down. And of course the media did precious little to defend his cause. (Not newsworthy.)

Perhaps they were too busy covering the protest at the canvassing board in Miami where a recount was underway, and a handful of hooligans had gathered to harass, threaten and actually assault workers doing the job . This was the so-called Brooks Brothers Riot, because the demonstrators were so impeccably dressed. And for good reason, it turns out. The media were quite content to portray them as ordinary citizens outraged over the flagrant pursuit of mathematical precision; how much effort would it have taken to identify them as Republican operatives (see photo above) flown in from Washington on private jets owned by Enron and Halliburton, lodged at expensive hotels, paid for their efforts and – in some cases – rewarded with posts in the Bush administration? Entirely too much effort, apparently. (Not newsworthy.) This was just one of the many, many, many MANY questionable tactics employed by the Republicans to pull of this election – there were at least 60 CRIMINAL offenses in all they were accused of committing. But the media didn’t find any of them newsworthy.

The Wall Street Journal, a decidedly Republican-friendly paper, did report that Bush personally thanked the mob for its unruliness on his behalf, and encouraged others to follow suit. But in general, you would have thought from the news coverage that the pro-Bush demonstrators and pro-Gore demonstrators were pretty evenly matched in numbers. What almost nobody reported was that the Bush camp HIRED demonstrators, while the Gore camp did not. (The American Prospect did report this, and also noted that some Gore supporters were infiltrating the Bush troops in order to collect enough cash to keep their own efforts going!) Just not newsworthy.

Nor did the media necessarily have the excuse of having weightier matters to consider. One story that they could have pursued several months before the election, instead of having another laugh at the Inventor of the Internet, was the voter “scrub” in Florida. Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris contracted Database Technologies (later called ChoicePoint) to purge the voter rolls of thousands of alleged felons. At least 57,000 alleged felons were scrubbed from the rolls, most of whom weren’t really felons at all; the one county that sought to verify all the names on its list found that out of 694 individuals, only 34 were confirmed felons; that’s an accuracy rate of about 5%. (Not newsworthy). Most were just guilty of the crime of being black (not newsworthy), a demographic that tends to vote solidly Democratic. Of those African-Americans who did register and vote, THIRTY-ONE PERCENT had their ballots tossed out. Among the “felons” who were purged, at least 325 were listed as having committed their offenses on some date in the FUTURE. (Not newsworthy).

DBT/ ChoicePoint was not the only electronic entity to get its finger in the pie. By the year 2000. electronic voting machines were becoming the rage, with three companies supplying the bulk of them: Sequoia, ES&S and Diebold. Combined, they count about 80% of the ballots nationwide; all three have strong ties to the Republican party (Sorry, not newsworthy). The machines they use malfunction frequently and are so easily hacked that a chimpanzee was once taught to do it, after Diebold insisted that its machines could not be hacked by “any human”. (Not newsworthy.) The chimp’s name, by the way, was Baxter. Maybe the little fellow would have received more media attention if he’d been wearing a stained blue dress. One comment made by a newspaper reporter, in all seriousness, was “but elections officials would know if a chimpanzee got into the voting machine room.” You think I’m just making this up, don’t you?

Wherever these machines are used, Republican candidates do extremely well. In fact, they often do so well that they collect more votes in a particular county than there are total registered voters. In one Texas county in the 2002 elections, three GOP candidates for office each received exactly 18,181 votes. What are the odds of that, ye mathematicians in the crowd? Never mind, keep it to yourself, because it’s not newsworthy.

The decision John Ellis and Fox made to declare Bush the winner in 2000 came after, by some unexplained process, 16,022 votes were subtracted from Gore and 4000 false votes added to Bush. This particular problem was later caught and corrected, but by then the PR pendulum had swung irrevocably toward Dubya – and you have to wonder how many other such aberrations were not caught. That is, you have to wonder unless you’re a journalist. Out of hundreds of such jaw-dropping irregularities that have popped up since “black box” voting became the vogue, we’re not aware of a single one that helped a Democratic candidate. Shh! Don’t alert the media.

During the 2004 presidential campaign, Wally O’Dell, the chairman of the board and CEO of Diebold, campaigned, donated and fund-raised vigorously for George W. Bush. And in a fund-raising letter, he stated that he was committed to “helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the President”. This comment, of course, set off a media firestorm – nah, just kidding. And deliver he did, by whatever means. Ohio (where Diebold was headquartered) was the pivotal state in 2004 as Florida had been in 2000, and the results, while not as close, were perhaps even more suspicious. But no more newsworthy.

Shortly after that election, I happened to be in Raleigh, NC where I dropped in at a rally at the state capital in opposition to electronic voting. It was attended by about 200 people, a respectable size rally for Raleigh. Most of the attendees were supporters of John Kerry and/or opponents of George W. Bush, but it was not intended as a partisan event. In fact, the key speaker, an expert in the technology used to tabulate votes, promptly identified himself as a registered Republican. But he was more concerned with democracy than in seeing his side win. And while he went into some detail about why there was reason for alarm, his bottom line was simple: “Electronic voting sucks. I want paper ballots, and I want them now.” But he was preaching to the choir. There was not one journalist, not one newspaper reporter or photographer or TV camera on hand. And the next day, there was no mention of the event in the paper. The front page story covered, with photos, another event: a church festival attended by about the same number of people.

Nor was Raleigh unique. In fact, the rally there was part of a national effort to stage similar events in every capital city in the nation, including Washington. Some of these rallies had far larger attendance than the one in Raleigh. But except for a few places (e.g. California) the local media and the national media solidly ignored them. Church festivals are newsworthy; struggles for fair elections are not. Oh yes, you will see an occasional mention of the problem just before each election, but it’s generally just brushed aside without going into much depth. Just before the 2010 midterms, Fox expressed concern that these voting machines might register too many DEMOCRATIC votes.

One journalist who did consider this item worth investigating, even in 2000, was the award-winning reporter Greg Palast (sometimes called “the most famous journalist you’ve never heard of”), who did a lot of digging and faithfully reported the sordid details about GOP shenanigans in Florida, including the voter purge, to the whole nation. The catch was that the nation wasn’t the United States. Palast was reporting for the London Observer and the BBC. So it was the British public, and not Americans, who learned about what had been going on behind the scenes in Florida. In the U.S., it just wasn’t newsworthy.

But Americans almost got their chance. Maybe, sort of. Well, not really. Palast contacted CBS with his story, hoping they’d give it some air time in the states. But they called him to tell him that it didn’t “check out”. Stunned, he asked them just what kind of research they did to reach that conclusion, and they replied that they’d called Jeb Bush’s office, which had denied the allegations, so that was that. I’m not kidding.

In a similar vein, I commented after the 2000 election to an editor at the ever-entertaining National Review about some of the skulduggery in the Sunshine state, and his reply was, “I know there was no fraud in Florida. I was speaking just the other day to the editor of The Orlando Sentinel, and he assured me there wasn’t.” He wasn’t kidding.

We don’t mean to suggest that Democrats behaved like perfect saints during this whole affair, but their offenses were few and slight compared to what the GOP did on a routine basis. More to the point, the media turned a microscope on the Gore camp and a blindfold on the Bush camp. There is an old expression about people ignoring “the elephant in the living room”. In this case, there was a huge herd of elephants trampling all over Florida – the living room, dining room, kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, den, basement, attic and front porch – and the media looked the other way. They were too busy watching Dishonest Al trying to steal the election. And waiting, of course, for him to tell his next big whopper.

(NOTE: This was intended to be a three-part series, but due to length, we’ve decided to split the last installment. We’ll have the conclusion coming up. Think you’ve heard it all? Just wait!)

1 Comment | Media | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by P.O.P.

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 133 other followers