Despite another “no contest” plea to four charges of voter fraud today, Hamilton County (Cincinnati), OH’s crackdown on voter fraud, has yet to produce a conviction for a crime that might have been stopped had GOP-supported polling place Photo ID restriction laws been in place.
Here’s the latest, via Cincinnati’s NPR affiliate WVXU:
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The other four counts were dismissed.
The 58-year-old Richardson, a long-time poll worker at the Madisonville Recreation Center…voted twice for herself in the 2012 election; and in elections in 2012, 2011 and 2009, she cast ballots for a number of friends and family members – one of whom was in a coma at the time.
As usual, it was an election insider, in this case, a pollworker, who attempted to defraud the system. As a pollworker, she figured out how to cast ballots for folks she knew would not be showing up to vote in person themselves.
No polling place Photo ID restriction — as favored by Republicans claiming to want to stop “voter fraud” (but, really, just hoping to stop legal, largely Democratic-leaning voters from being able to cast a vote) — would have deterred her insider efforts.
Out of the 421,997 votes cast in Hamilton County’s 2012 November general election (and more in primaries last year) prosecutors have also been able to net two more convictions, both for absentee ballot fraud, which is also not affected in any way by the polling place Photo ID restrictions called for by Republicans…
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The same is true of Sister Marguerite Kloos, a Sister of Charity who had cast a ballot for another nun who had died last fall before absentee ballots had been mailed out.
As The BRAD BLOG has reported for years, based on empirical study after empirical study to back up the case, in-person polling place impersonation, the only type of voter fraud that can possibly be deterred by Photo ID restrictions, is extraordinarily rare. Republican-enacted laws passed (theoretically) to deter it, stand to disenfranchise far more perfectly legal voters — exponentially so — than fraudulent votes that might ever be deterred by such laws.
Last August, for example, we reported on a new nationwide analysis by a non-partisan news consortium which examined every single election fraud case in the U.S. going back to 2000. Their findings? Out of thousands of cases of fraud, and hundreds of millions of legal votes cast in all 50 states for more than a decade, the study identified just ten (10!) cases of in-person voter fraud that might have been deterred by Republican polling place Photo ID restriction laws.
At the same time, partisan Republican groups such as “True the Vote” continue to fraudulently claim a massive “voter fraud” epidemic in support of GOP Photo ID restrictions. As we reported last December, their website had boasted of “voter fraud convictions in 46 states”, but deceptively failed to point out that ZERO of the allegations and convictions cited would have been deterred by polling place Photo ID laws.
In the meantime, if you’re looking for actual fraud, please see our article from last August, detailing election fraud allegations and convictions, for very high profile Republicans — including Mitt Romney and even the former Sec. of State of Indiana (who was convicted of 3 felony voter fraud counts, even while he was the chief election official tasked with overseeing and enforcing the state’s first-in-the-nation polling place Photo ID restriction law). None of the cases cited in the article, of those very high-profile GOPers, would have been deterred by the type of voting restriction laws favored by Republicans.
Great report, Brad. And perfect timing…will post wide. Thank you!
This is pointless chatter. It was virtually impossible to spot the wholesale election fraud when it was happening… when thousands of phony undervotes were used via formulaic shaving just a little at a time in selected precincts or wards to shape final outcomes (all those “close” races the the GOP barely won- heh).
It was all done almost instantly and invisibly at machine levels, no matter what kind of vote system was being used.
Likely not done so much any more but it damn sure was for a few years. The programmers and company consultants are long gone or just replaced by now, and different owners are in charge of Premier (Diebold), ES&S, Sequoia, etc. but it happened.
All the rest of this, with the photo IDs, the silly weenie laws with hours and locations cut, screwing around with registrations… that was just to take everyones’ eyes off the ball as the real machine was shut down. All this fussing now is just wheel spinning. Go back to sleep, kiddies.
The ONLY fscking story Brad is actually qualified to report on lately, but even with that said, I hate the fact he blindly supports agenda 21, and therefore I can no longer recommend this ASS FSCK to publish the truth. Black box voting already nailed this crap to the wall.
You want a United Nations Agenda 21 National ID Card Brad? Just Say So.
That way we know who is true.
Oh yeah, Your immigration reform, (for the fscking illegal aliens) which you don’t know jack about, thats stealth DIGITAL ID 4 ALL BITCH!
People working within the polling systems will always have more opportunity to defraud, but does that mean that we shouldn’t implement a photo ID requirement to help with the types of voter fraud that might alleviate?
Interesting that voter fraud is prosecuted so vigorously when the right to have our vote counted isn’t part of the game plan. It’s either important or it isn’t. The machines prove it’s not.