Who's Counting - A Goodreads Book Review

Who's Counting?: How Fraudsters and Bureaucrats Put Your Vote at Risk by John Fund

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This was a frustrating book for me to read.

Voter fraud is an issue that attracts my attention.  Everyone should have the right to vote....once.

The first half of the book is a compendium of voter fraud tactics that are used by Democrats AND Republicans routinely use to skew election results.  Due to my past attention to this issue, there was little new material in the first half of the book.

One new tidbit came out of Florida where there are naturalized citizens who immigrated from Cuba running absentee voter fraud rings in areas with lots of senior citizens.  Their activities are for the benefit of local/state Republican candidates.  Given that they were active in 2000, I think it is legitimate to wonder how much their activities influenced the 2000 Presidential election.  (I still think that GW Bush was a better candidate and President than Al Gore regardless of the debate over elections issues.)

And then I hit the wall roughly half way through.  The theme of the book went from documenting voter fraud to strictly criticizing the Obama administration over the inaction of the various agencies to prosecute people that have violated federal elections laws.  A chapter or two about that lack of legal action would have been sufficient.

However, the back half of the book makes it much harder to recommend this book to those that are left of center.  When we need every political persuasion to participate in securing our elections, how can I recommend a book that so strongly disparages the left?  That is essentially the back 1/3 to 1/2 of this book.

This dichotomy was so strong that I had to put this book down for several months.

Read it for the first half.  That part of the book is worth 5 stars.



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Voter Fraud: Blue On Blue Edition

Had this been properly investigated at the time, Hillary Clinton would have won Indiana in the Democrat primary.  How that might have altered the 2008 election is anyone's guess.

But make no mistake about it, voter fraud is real and it does affect our current elections.

But I Am Sure He Did Not Mean Me

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder recently suggested that we need national election standards.

Election officials across the county should “be striving to administer elections more efficiently and more fairly,” Holder said, according to the remarks.

“This means taking steps to address long lines at polling places — and ensuring that every polling place has an adequate number of voting machines,” Holder said. “We must acknowledge that giving our fellow citizens access to the voting booth for longer hours and over additional days will enable more of them to cast their ballots without unduly interfering with the work or family obligations that so many have.”

Holder also said that the “ordinary citizens who, just last month, endured long lines, biting temperatures, and blazing sun to make certain that their votes would be counted” were continuing the legacy of Americans who have fought for the right to vote.

The snow drifts in hell must be eight feet deep at this point.  I agree with Mr. Holder.

Although I would include elements like ensuring that voters are citizens of the U.S. before they are registered, and ensuring that felons/prisoners that are ineligible to vote under state laws are in fact prevented from voting.  I also want to see voter ID requirements strengthened; especially in the case of same day registration/voting.  We have had far too many instances where people are voting without being properly identified as qualified voters, or voting in multiple jurisdictions.

A comprehensive set of national election standards would resolve many questions about our current elections practices.  It would, theoretically, secure the right to vote by not only establishing common voting conditions and methods for reviewing voter rolls, but by also clamping down on fraudulent registration and voting.

I am more than a little skeptical about Mr. Holder's ability to be truly comprehensive.  I am willing to bet that the electoral issues that concern me do not concern him in the slightest.

Disappearing Voters

Slate recently published a story about disappearing voters in Milwaukee, WI.

Sixty percent of Milwaukee’s black voters have disappeared.

Democrats have feared for years that one of the particular challenges of running campaigns in 2012 would be simply locating their voters.  The party’s constituencies (young people, immigrants, minorities) tend to be among the most mobile demographic groups.  And as NPR speculated this week in an analysis of battleground-state foreclosure figures, the housing crisis will likely only have made things more difficult for Democrats looking for their supporters.

The focus on the story is on how our tough economic times have caused people to move frequently.  And while I will readily admit that people losing their homes or people moving frequently due to rent issues has to be a big problem, I also want to suggest that there may be another factor in play.

Fraudulent voting causing names and addresses to appear in voter rolls that cannot be confirmed in person.

The police review of irregular voting in the 2004 election clearly indicates that there were hundreds of votes cast that could not be reliably tied back to a legal Wisconsin resident.  One district attorney pegs the number of questionable votes as closer to 4,600.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel found myriad voting problems occurred in Milwaukee and other parts of the state in the 2004 election, the one later investigated by the Milwaukee police and state and federal prosecutors.

Three of the newspaper’s findings provide some perspective:

1. In Milwaukee, there was a discrepancy between the ballot count and the number of people listed as having voted of about 7,000.

(Investigators were later able to whittle the discrepancy to 4,600 votes, or 1.67 percent of the 277,000 votes cast in the city.)

2. Some 1,300 on-site voter registrations in Milwaukee could not be processed for a variety of reasons, including missing addresses and missing names. More than 140 of those who voted listed addresses outside the city.

3. At least 278 cases statewide where felons may have improperly voted, though the number was likely considerably higher, since only a partial review of those who voted was possible.

The Journal Sentinel reports prompted a joint federal-state investigation in 2005. Those investigators found more than 200 cases of felons voting illegally in Milwaukee and at least 100 cases of double voting in the 2004 election, numbers that echoed the newspaper’s findings.

About a dozen cases of voter fraud were pursued, with mixed results, but then-U.S. Attorney Steven Biskupic concluded there had been no findings of widespread fraud.

Then-Milwaukee County District Attorney E. Michael McCann said in June 2005 he was troubled by the 4,600-vote discrepancy that remained, suggesting that questions will linger about whether systematic fraud occurred in the city.

"I have a reservation about those 4,600 votes," he said.

This apparently is a continuing problem in Wisconsin.

Just another reason for us to undertake comprehensive elections reform to ensure that every legitimate voters gets a chance to vote, and that there their vote is counted while at the same time preventing illegitimate votes from being cast.

[just....erg -Ed.]

It Just Gets Worse

Some time ago, I noted that there were a large number of questionable votes cast in the 2008 race for Senator in Minnesota.  Norm Coleman lost the race by 312 votes.  At the time, GOP election monitors had found 341 convicted felons that had voted illegally in that election in violation of that state's laws.

I was wrong.  The actual number of felons that had voted in that election was 1,099.  Of that number, 177 people have been convicted of vote fraud.

Not registration.  Casting a fraudulent ballot.

Now that election really mattered.  Al Franken was the 60th Democratic vote in the U.S. Senate.  No Al Franken, no PPACA/Obamacare.

At least, there would have been some real negotiations over the issue instead of having it rammed down our throats.

We must secure the ballot box against fraudulent/illegal ballots.  It is the most important [issue] facing America today.  Without confidence in the elections process, there can be no "consent of the governed".

Alleged Vote Fraud Results in Felony Charges

Just when you thought we were safe from voter fraud, in comes the boleteros. As a preview, this story indicates that this activity in Miami-Dade county is currently dominated by Republicans.  But should this sort of thing be permissible for either party?  Should anyone other than the voter have access to that ballot?

When Is An Apple Not An Apple

When it's an orange.

Despite the many protestations to the contrary, voter fraud is real in the U.S.  An ongoing investigation in Virginia has revealed hundreds of instances of registration fraud.  The state police have concluded that some of those fraudulent registrations resulted in illegal ballots being cast.

As a side note, I disagree with states that auto-magically remove voting rights from felons as a part of their conviction and sentencing.  Most certainly such folks should not be voting while they are in jail or prison.  But once they have "done their time", is it really appropriate to completely suspend their voting rights?  It ought to be one available element of any sentence, but should it be automatic?

Sadly, it looks like a bunch of felons got screwed by voting advocacy groups...like ACORN...who had workers lie to the felons about their eligibility to vote.

In any case, we now have hundreds of examples of fraud in the voting system to point to the next time some fool decides to claim that a person is more likely to be struck by lightning than for any sort of voter fraud to occur.

Voter ID Is A Good Requirement

So says Artur Davis, former US Representative from Alabama:

The truth is that the most aggressive contemporary voter suppression in the African American community, at least in Alabama, is the wholesale manufacture of ballots, at the polls and absentee, in parts of the Black Belt.

Voting the names of the dead, and the nonexistent, and the too-mentally-impaired to function, cancels out the votes of citizens who are exercising their rights -- that's suppression by any light. If you doubt it exists, I don't; I've heard the peddlers of these ballots brag about it, I've been asked to provide the funds for it, and I am confident it has changed at least a few close local election results.

...

The case for voter ID, however, is a good one, and it ought to make politics a little cleaner and the process of conducting elections much fairer. I wish I'd gotten it right the first time.

Keep the above in mind when we go to the polls a year from today.  There are professional vote fraud agents in the land that sell their services for politics and profit.  And they are working to steal your vote.

h/t to Instapundit

Felonious And Fraudulent

Why all the concern over fraudulent voter registrations?  Why the concern over keeping voter rolls clear of those that are ineligible to vote?

Because they affect the outcome of close races.  Not theoretically.  Actually.

The six-month election recount that turned former "Saturday Night Live" comedian Al Franken into a U.S. senator may have been decided by convicted felons who voted illegally in Minnesota's Twin Cities.


That's the finding of an 18-month study conducted by Minnesota Majority, a conservative watchdog group, which found that at least 341 convicted felons in largely Democratic Minneapolis-St. Paul voted illegally in the 2008 Senate race between Franken, a Democrat, and his Republican opponent, then-incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman.

Of course, some folks just won't care....because they approve of the outcome when fraudulent ballots are used.