|
|
Back to UserFriendly Strip Comments Index
|
ATTN: DesertRat66 (US Political Thread) | by firehawk | 2008-10-21 01:20:01 |
|
Voter Registration Fraud | by DesiredUsername | 2008-10-21 01:39:50 |
| 1 vs. 1.3 million |
by jdelphiki |
2008-10-21 05:37:59 |
Release the hounds and shut down the McCain campaign! Because *certainly* it's worse when Republicans do it. ;P
All snark aside, it's every bit as wrong for the guy in California (or anywhere) to be engaging in election fraud. It's bad enough, all the random, disorganized cases that pop up every election cycle: anything from stealing yard signs, to paying transients to vote, to intimidating/misleading voters, to changing the voting rules at the last minute in order to gain advantage. It's worse, in my opinion, when the process is organized and clearly sanctioned by one of the candidates.
And for the record...
- Sign stealing: I've seen reports of supporters of both parties doing it. Locally, I've seen *candidates* from both parties getting caught doing it.
- Paying transients to vote: The case I read about was in Illinois, where a Democratic supporter of John Kerry (IIRC) was picking transients of the street, registering them, and, on election day, giving them a ride to the polls and paying them a dollar to go vote for the Democratic ticket.
- Misleading/intimidating voters: I've read several cases where Republicans were accused of challenging voting rules; of making phone calls to likely Democrat voters in obvious attempts at confusing them about when/where voting was taking place or about their eligibility; of nitpicking details of voter registrations for people who should otherwise be able to vote in obvious and blatant attempts to shve votes.
- Last minute voting rule changes: This one's pretty clear: Democrats in the St. Louis area in the close 2000 election petitioned a pet judge to allow precinct in heavily Democrat-oriented areas to stay open an extra couple of hours to allow voters there time to get home from work and vote. Keep in mind that they did *not* ask for *all* the polls to be left open...only the ones that favored them. The judge granted the request and though it did not affect the presidential election, it could very easily have affected a very tight governor's race.
- Also under last minute rule changes: Florida, 2000. Under what was likely the common, balancing margin of error, both parties completely undermined the election process by trying to twist/spin the election laws cover challenges that nobody imagined would happen (although they *should* have imagined it).
I apologize that I don't have corroborating links. I'm going off of specific cases that I've seen in the news over the past several election cycles so if you don't trust my integrity on this, I understand. ;)
My point is that we see this kind of behavior from both parties, local to national, every single election. Neither party can claim to be lily-white on the issue.
But when it comes down to an organization like ACORN, that has registered 1.3 million voters in key battleground states in this election alone, and when ACORN is shown to be, at best, grossly incompetent and, at worst, actively and methodically attempting to defraud either the election registration process or the outcome of the election itself; and when it comes down to the basic fact that one of the candidates was active in supporting such an organization (including giving $800K to one of its subsidiaries), I think that's worthy both of being a significant campaign issue and of being scrutinized more closely than the normal party shenanigans.
I recognize that you and I disagree on this (we've gone around on it a few times already), so I understand that we're not likely to convince each other. I guess I feel like I would rather not see any voter/registration fraud in our elections...at any level...but I am greatly concerned at the scale and level of organization that a group like ACORN wields and the potential impact their illicit activities could have on the election. |
|
[ Reply ] |
|
We have? | by DesiredUsername | 2008-10-21 08:48:14 |
|
Hmmm... | by jdelphiki | 2008-10-21 08:55:28 |
|
No worries. :-) (n/t) | by DesiredUsername | 2008-10-21 09:00:55 |
|
|
[Todays Cartoon Discussion]
[News Index]
|
|
