And Karl Rove tried so hard to prove voter fraud that he’ll probably be rewarded with a trip to the federal penitentiary.
On August 13, 2009,
in Liberate Your Radio from The Right,
by Mary Mancini
On April 13, 2009,
in Liberate Your Radio from The Right,
by Mary Mancini
(Background: Election fraud is a systematic effort by those with power to steal an election through vote manipulation and voter suppression. Voter fraud is when a voter attempts to vote more than once or by impersonating someone else.)
When state legislators of the Republican variety won absolute control of the Tennessee General Assembly last fall, they decided that voter suppression would be a worthy goal. Their strategy is a four-part full court press – or “war on voting,” if you prefer:
1) Repeal the Tennessee Voter Confidence Act (Paper Ballot Bill)
2) Require Proof of Citizenship to register
3) Require picture IDs to vote
4) Replace perfectly qualified election county administrators with their cronies
For more on how these four items, when combined, suppress the vote of American citizens, go to the Brennan Center for Justice and read their report.
Today at 5 p.m., both the citizenship (SB1999) and photo id SB0150 bills will come up for a vote before the full senate. Below is the summary of each bill as well as the reasons why these bills are not only not necessary but detrimental to free and full participatory democracy.
Please call your legislators before 5 PM today and ask them to vote NO on each bill. You can find your state Senator by calling the Clerk’s office at (615) 741-2730 or entering your street and zip code at the General Assembly website: http://www.capitol.tn.gov/senate/members/
SB1999 by *Norris, *Ketron. (HB1838 by *Todd.)
As introduced, requires citizenship status to be proven prior to registration to vote and requires certain procedures to ensure identity and citizenship status prior to voting. – Amends TCA Title 2 and Title 4.
- This legislation is a solution in search of a problem
- Existing law and voter registration cards already require that voters swear or affirm in writing that they are citizens. Lying on a voter registration card is already a felony.
- Tennessee law provides a procedure, including due process protection, for challenging a voter.
- Not everyone has a drivers license, birth certificate, or passport. For instance, many Tennesseans born in the 1930s and 1940s were born at home or delivered by midwives and had no birth certificate issued. Those who do not may face an undue financial burden to acquire these documents as each costs money and require time spent away from work to obtain.
Additional Bits
- Proof of voter registration from another state or county is not satisfactory evidence of citizenship so if you’re moving to Tennessee or from one county to another within the state, ask yourself one question – do you know where your birth certificate is?
-
And just in case the next bill isn’t enough to make sure that a photo ID is required, this bill also amends the Tennessee Code to require the voter to present a photo ID:
In addition, the voter shall present to the registrar one (1) form of identification that bears the name, address and photograph of the voter.
SB0150 by *Ketron, *Johnson, *Beavers. (HB0639 by *Maggart, *Faulkner, *Evans, *Weaver.)
As introduced, requires a voter to present qualified photographic identification before voting; voters without proper identification shall be allowed to cast provisional ballots. – Amends TCA Title 2, Chapter 7, Part 1.
- Photo ID Laws are the modern day equivalent of a poll tax. The expenses involved in obtaining a photo ID card will prevent some individuals from voting.
- The bills include language to allow individuals to affidavits of indigency/and religious exemption to waive costs, which begs the question, if it’s enough for some people to swear they are indigent or exempt for religious reasons under penalty of law and be allowed to vote, why isn’t it good for the rest of us to swear we are who we are and be allowed to vote?
- This is a solution in search of a problem. Contrary to what we are being told, there is no pervasive voter fraud problem in the United States. In the last 10 years, the cases of prosecuted voter fraud can be counted on one hand.
- Restrictive Photo ID cards disenfranchise legitimate voters. These requirements typically impact minorities, limited-income and disabled persons, and seniors. People who belong to these groups are less likely to have access to the documents required to obtain a photo ID.
Both of these bills do nothing. They address non-existent problems. “Claims of voter fraud,” the Brennan Center report states, “should be carefully tested before they become the basis for action.” I can tell you from sitting in the committee meetings and listening to the sponsors of both SB1999 and SB0150 that all that has been offered is anecdotal evidence of “voter fraud.” When asked for instances of actual “voter Fraud,” none is presented and further discussion is dropped.
Please contact your Senator ASAP and ask them to vote NO today on SB1999 and SB0150.
Read More
- Tennessee Senate Republicans Block the Vote
- Walk a mile in a Man’s Shoes and Then Require Photo IDs to Vote
- Requiring Photo IDs to Vote is a Solution in Search of a Problem
- Do You Know Where Your Birth Certificate Is?
- Protect and Purify the Ballot: Voter Suppression Style
- Tennessee Voter Photo ID Bill Would Disenfranchise State Senator
- How Many Non-Citizens are Voting in Tennessee Elections?
On March 6, 2009,
in Liberate Your Radio from The Right,
by Mary Mancini
A law that keeps even one person from exercising their franchise is one law too many. Some don’t feel that way and so to them, SB150, which would require photo IDs to vote and was passed out of the Senate State and Local Government Committee on Tuesday, is no big whoop.
But it is a big whoop, especially since the bill is a solution in search of a problem.
First, let’s define the terms we are working with. “Voter fraud,” which rarely happens, is fraud perpetrated by a voter, i.e. impersonating someone to cast a vote or voting even though you do not meet the eligibility requirements. “Election fraud,” which happens more frequently, is systematic and systemic disenfranchisement. In other words, it’s fraud perpetrated by those working within the system.
During Tuesday’s meeting, Senator Bill Ketron (R-Murfreesboro), the bill’s sponsor and chairman of the committee, said that he realized the need for photo IDs when he was in Memphis testifying in the Ophelia Ford “voter fraud” case. He said, “Unfortunately, we know that voter fraud exists and that there are people who try to be dishonest in an election.”
Actually, what we know is that “election fraud” exists. The three people in Memphis who plead guilty to faking votes in the Ophelia Ford case – “two of them cast in the names of dead people – were poll workers, not voters. No walking dead tried to vote (or eat brains).
We’re still waiting for an answer to Senator Lowe Finney’s (D-Jackson), the Fightin’ 27th!) follow up question to Senator Ketron during that very same committee meeting – “have their been any other instances of ‘voter fraud’ in the state of Tennessee?”
Doing his best Sarah Palin, Senator Ketron said, “I’ll try and find ya some and I’ll bring’em to ya.”
I left a message for Senator Finney to ask if he had heard from Senator Ketron, but have not yet heard back. My best educated guess is that the answer is “no, I haven’t.” Why? Because requiring photo IDs to vote is a solution in search of a problem.
Next up: The irony of absentee ballots.
On March 2, 2009,
in Liberate Your Radio from The Right,
by Mary Mancini
The Tennessee State Senate State and Local Government Committee meets tomorrow, Tuesday, March 3, at 8:30 am, in Legislative Plaza, Room 12, to discuss eight Voter ID bills that will in effect place a poll tax on voting in Tennessee.
Excuse me, sir, did you show your photo ID before you got that purple finger?
These eight bills were all introduced by Republicans – the Party of preventing the vote – in an effort to fulfill Lt. Governor Ron Ramsey’s post-election day promise to give “new life” to certain issues including “‘pro-business issues’, 2nd Amendment issues, abortion issues, and illegal immigration issues… voter ID specifically and SJR 127.”
SB0150 and SB1681 by Bill Ketron (R-Murfreesboro), as well as SB0587 by Mae Beavers (R-Mt. Juliet) and SB0191 by Dewayne Bunch (R-Cleveland) would make showing”qualified photographic identification” at the polls before voting mandatory. SB0173 and SB0886 by Senator Ketron, and SB0194 by Senator Bunch “requires citizenship status to be proven prior to registration to vote and requires certain procedures to ensure identity and citizenship status prior to voting.”
While on the surface these bills may seem like a good idea, they are really a solution in search of a problem and will actually do more to disenfranchise voters than maintain the integrity of our elections.
The Brennan Center of Justice has studied the issue of voter fraud extensively and have concluded that someone is more likely to be hit by lightning than commit voter fraud. They also analyzed the more than 250 claims of fraud in the Supreme Court’s photo ID case and found that there was “not one proven case of a fraudulent vote that the challenged law could prevent.”
In 2007, the Election Assistance Commission, the federal panel responsible for conducting election research, altered their findings so they could report that “the pervasiveness of fraud was open to debate.”
From October 2002 to September 2005, the Justice Department indicted only 40 voters for registration fraud or illegal voting, 21 of whom were noncitizens and during the same time period, only 95 defendants were charged with federal election-fraud-related crimes in the whole country.
Remember the U.S. Attorney General scandal? All because the justice department tried to force State AG’s into ferreting out non-existent cases of voter fraud.
And take Texas’ Republican Attorney General Greg Abbott who “declared war on what he claimed was rampant vote fraud in Texas” and “set up a special vote fraud unit and got a $1.4 million grant from the feds for the work.” That was in 2006. In 2008, the Dallas Morning News reported on the results of his efforts – 26 cases, all involving Democrats, and almost all involving minorities.
Even the federal court of appeals judge who wrote the majority decision upholding an Indiana voter identification law enacted in 2005 said, “As far as anyone knows…no one in Indiana, and not many people elsewhere, are known to have been prosecuted for impersonating a registered voter.”
Between 13 and 22 million people in the United States do not have a photo id. A disproportionately large number of them are elderly and in poverty. These bills have the potential of disenfranchising thousands of people in this state alone.
It’s already happened to the poor, the elderly, and the poor, elderly nuns in other states.
Members of the Senate State and Local Government Committee:
Bill Ketron (R-Murfreesboro, the fightin’ 13th), Chair, Lowe Finney (D-Jackson), Vice Chair, Joe Haynes (D-Goodlettsville), Secretary, Tim Burchett (R-Knoxville), Mike Faulk (R-Church Hill), Thelma Harper (D-Nashville), Mark Norris (R-Collierville), Jim Tracy (R-Shelbyville), Ken Yager (R-Harriman)
Please call and email to tell them to just say no to these bills.
UPDATE: Goldni asks a great question over at a Kleinheider joint. Will the act of obtaining a photo create even more barriers:
Here’s an honest question–I would guess that most people do not register to vote at a central office, at an election commission or DMV. In election years, voter registration is often done by campaign volunteers, who distribute the forms and then mail them to the election commission. It’s convenient for voters to be able to register on the spot. Does this mean that voter registration will now have to be done in only a few locations so that pictures can be made?
That’s where I’m worried about the suppression, not so much the monetary cost. It makes it more difficult to register to vote, if there are only a few places to do so.
On November 2, 2008,
in Uncategorized,
by Mary Mancini
First, let’s establish the difference between election fraud and voter fraud. Election fraud is a systematic effort by those with power to steal an election through vote manipulation and voter suppression. Voter fraud is when a voter attempts to vote more than once or by impersonating someone else. The McCain campaign has been huckstering the false narrative of voter fraud. We’ll see to what end on Wednesday.
In the meantime, From Chisun Lee of ProPublica:
For weeks Republican leaders have warned that widely reported problems with fake voter registrations could result in a flood of phony votes in pivotal states.
But Ronald Michaelson, a veteran election administrator and member of the McCain-Palin Honest and Open Election Committee, said in an interview that he could not name a single instance in which this had occurred.
“Do we have a documented instance of voting fraud that resulted from a phony registration form? No, I can’t cite one, chapter and verse.”
…
Asked for specifics about the dangers of fake registration, Ben Porritt, a spokesman for the McCain campaign, provided links to 13 news clips and a 2003 Missouri state auditor’s report. Eleven of the cases did not involve registration fraud. Two recounted how felons appeared to have cast illegal votes under their own names. The lone example of a forged registration leading to an illegitimate vote comes from The Wall Street Journal’s John Fund, who in April 2006 wrote that a community organizer had improperly registered a noncitizen, and then “someone eventually voted in [the noncitizen’s] name.”
And this from Keith Olbermann (Who keeps showing up in my dreams. Last night he was waiting in the cafeteria line with FOL* Delworthio and family and he wanted to hang out. That was nice.)
And finally, Nashville has its own distortionist willing to spread the “voter fraud” myth. In last week’s Tennessean, Phil Valentine wrote that Tennessee may have it’s own version of ACORN:
Friday, a week ago, I got a tip on my radio show that vanloads of non-citizens were showing up at an early voting poll and voting. Lynn Greer, a Davidson County Election Commission member confirmed the report. “What I’ve heard is they’re bringing in a group of Spanish-speaking people, many of whom do not have a voter registration card and cannot speak English,” Greer told me.
Here’s my response (submitted to the Tennessean):
Like many, I waited all month for an “October Surprise,” – an event so monumental that it would cause enough chaos to affect the outcome of this year’s election. I never expected that the actual October Surprise would be something much more low key – the insidious, and coordinated attack on ACORN and the subsequent cries of “voter fraud” it has enabled.
After more than four years of activists trying to get election officials to take seriously the very real issue of election fraud, i.e. large scale voter roll purging, broken electronic voting machines, intimidation, long lines, and negative legislative influence (like Florida’s stringent “No Match, No Vote” law), the righteous indignation and moral high ground that comes with trying to protect our precious right to vote has been co-opted by Republican operatives who, in a matter of days, were able to get the false narrative of “voter fraud” on the lips of almost every broadcaster.
Senator McCain, Fox News, and other conservative ideologues, like Nashville’s own Phil Valentine. have reported incidences that “prove” multiple and fake voter registrations as well as the intent of some to cast non-legitimate ballots. These accusations come despite scant evidence (or convictions) of voter fraud, a federal law that requires ID from anyone voting for the first time (in Tennessee, showing your voter registration card is sufficient), and a report by the Brennan Center that states that voter fraud is “extremely rare.”
Last Sunday, Valentine wrote in his column that Nashville has its own “well-organized voter fraud ring” because of a tip he received about “vanloads of non-citizens” showing up at an early voting location. This incident did not happen and his reporting of it serves no purpose other than to stoke fear and division. And this election year, with emotions on both sides so heightened, his false accusations could prove to be incendiary.
This year’s October Surprise may not be dynamic enough to swing votes prior to the election, but with people like Phil Valentine spreading rumors and innuendo instead of fact, it certainly will cast doubt on the legitimacy of the winner afterwards. Which, unfortunately, seems to be the goal.
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GUESTS: Monday, March 15, 2010 Chris Ford of TN Conservation Voters, Bob Tuke, and Karl Frisch of of Media Matters for America.
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