Election Day Registration: We've almost got it! But time's almost out.

To answer the question... (3.33 / 3)

Election Fraud. Hardly any election fraud is too much election fraud. When i moved to South Worcester in 2000, there were 7 people I never heard of living in my house. It took until 2005 to lose these ghost names. Now I am moving. I could conceivably vote in Worcester, go to my new voting district and vote there. No worry, I'm too honest to do it.
Has Mr. Augustus ever even LIVED in Worcester since he took office? How come carpetbagging lives on in this state? I ask these questions with all seriousness intended.
I can include our US Rep. McGovern in this discussion too.  

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by: billxi @ Wed Jul 30, 2008 at 11:46:57 AM CDT

you have it backwards (6.00 / 5)

Big threats to elections are in our counting procedures, the machines we use, central tabulation, and so on.  I've definitely seen elections whose results were affected due to problems with those.  The change from advance registration to election day registration has been shown to have very little impact, if any (certainly not measurable) on fraud, and in any case the level pales in comparison to the much bigger concerns.  Ironically, one of the biggest problems that skews elections is vote suppression, and Election Day Registration is one of the biggest solutions to vote suppression, so it definitely has a very significant positive effect in terms of making elections less fraudulent and more fair and legitimate.

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by: Cos @ Wed Jul 30, 2008 at 12:04:24 PM CDT

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Vote Tabulation (5.00 / 1)

Have you ever physically counted votes? I have. I found it to be educational and interesting. The numbers have to correlate exactly. Or you keep going until they do. All candidates are allowed to attend, or have a representative there.  

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by: billxi @ Thu Jul 31, 2008 at 06:13:23 AM CDT

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Yes, I have (0.00 / 0)

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by: Cos @ Thu Jul 31, 2008 at 09:00:33 AM CDT

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For example (6.00 / 2)

One of the largest cases of election fraud I've run into in recent years, was in a small city in Connecticut.  Someone with access to the city's records had changed the party affiliation of voters with Hispanic sounding last names from Democratic to unaffiliated, so they couldn't vote in the closed Democratic city primary.  A lot of Hispanics had recently registered as Democrats to vote for a popular new candidate who threatened some existing interests, but when they arrived at the polls they found they were not listed properly and could not vote.  Read the full story here.  I ran into this when I volunteered for Ned Lamont in the primary, because it was still happening, and I was still running into voters with Hispanic sounding names who thought they'd registered as Democrats and found themselves "unaffiliated".

Real voter registration fraud, the kind that has an impact on elections, is generally not done by individual voters, it is done by people with power and access, who can make changes to lots of registrations.  In that context, Election Day Registration introduces a lot more on the solution side of things than on the problem side.  It doesn't make voter registration fraud impossible, but it makes wide scale voter registration fraud harder to do, and less likely to succeed.

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by: Cos @ Wed Jul 30, 2008 at 12:12:11 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

ghost names: EDR is a partial solution (6.00 / 3)

Furthermore, as you clearly see from your own example, the problem you pose is not one that is caused by EDR.  "Ghost names" happen when people move to another state, or move within the state and forget to re-register, so your city/town never sees that they're no longer there.  That happens regardless of whether EDR exists, which is why you ran into it even though Massachusetts has a 20 day advance deadline.  That 20 day advance deadline hasn't prevented this from happening, or even reduced the problem, in any way.

However, if we had election day registration, you'd actually see less of this, because as I said, one of the most common sources of "ghost names" is people who move within state but forget to re-register (or, has happened to a friend of mine, do remember to reregister, but have the town misinterpret their change of address and "move" them back to their old address).  These people then go to vote at their new polling place, find they're not registered, don't vote, and their old registration remains in place until the next time they try to vote, which in many cases is 2 or 4 years, or more.

If they could register at their new polling place that day, their new registration would be updated and their "ghost" registration would disappear from their old address soon after.  With EDR, the average time for "ghost names" to clear up would become shorter.

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by: Cos @ Wed Jul 30, 2008 at 12:18:12 PM CDT

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Same day voter registration is already the law of the land in WI (5.00 / 1)

I don't recall reading about runaway voter fraud in Wisconsin.  You do understand that all the restrictions depress more votes than it ever would prevent "voter fraud", which by the way was trumped up by Rove and was the chief cause of the U.S. Attorney firings scandal.  Voter fraud is always the card played by Republicans when they are looking for a way to make sure less people vote.  

So pardon me, if I am not moved by your worry of "voter fraud", always the excuse the GOP use to suppress votes, usually Democratic votes.

"Truth is the American bottom line." -- John Kerry, April 22, 2006 at Faneuil Hall

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by: beachmom @ Wed Jul 30, 2008 at 15:27:30 PM CDT

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1960 (4.00 / 1)

 I used that as a reference to your blanket statement about the GOP committing voter fraud. Democrats do it too. Isn't Massachusetts the home of Gerrymandering? Take a look at my 3rd Worcester district before you answer. Neither party is pure. I just feel if you're going to throw the stones, you'd better be ready for return volleys. I find my poking fun as keeping you partisan demmies grounded. I'm unenrolled myself, but I like to be informed. I am not a blind follower like most members of this site.

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by: billxi @ Thu Jul 31, 2008 at 06:30:05 AM CDT

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GOP use of "voter fraud" (0.00 / 0)

I didn't see anyone say that only Republicans commit voting fraud.  You really ought to read more carefully.  What the comment you're replying to here says is that voter fraud is "the card the GOP plays" to justify voter suppression.  That is indeed true.

Individual voter fraud has not been demonstrated to be much of a factor in any elections I know of in recent decades (as opposed to wider-scale election fraud perpetrated by election officials), but Republicans are constantly using the claim of voter fraud to justify all sorts of things meant to suppress voter turnout, to keep as many people as they can from the polls.

The US Attorneys scandal?  Good US Attorneys fired because they declined to prosecute phony voter fraud cases with no real evidence, after being pressured to pursue those cases by the Justice Department.

Nuns turned away at their regular polling place because of a super-strict new voter ID law?  Again, Republicans justified that law by playing the "voter fraud" card.

There is incontrovertible evidence of huge-scale voter suppression, and of the fact that Republican efforts to control voting in a variety of ways (fake prosecutions, ID laws, database purges, glad they can't do poll taxes anymore or they would!) really does reduce voter turnout by several percent.  Millions of voters who would've voted in elections in recent years, ended up not doing so because of these Republican-led voter suppression efforts.  And for what?  What "fraud" has been prevented?  There's no evidence of it.  We know that these voter suppression efforts make elections less fair and less legitimate, even if they have prevented a handful of individuals from double-voting.

That's what that comment was referring to, and it's very true: Self-righteous claims of "voter fraud" are used, overwhelmingly by Republicans, to interfere with the right to vote and suppress voting participation, to make elections less fair but more Republican-slanted (because voter suppression disproportionately affects poorer people).

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by: Cos @ Thu Jul 31, 2008 at 08:59:37 AM CDT

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Gerrymandering isn't fraud (0.00 / 0)

It isn't particularly democratic (small D), but it's not fraudulent by definition.

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by: stomv @ Thu Jul 31, 2008 at 12:03:48 PM CDT

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Also, unrelated to Election Day Registration (0.00 / 0)

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by: Cos @ Thu Jul 31, 2008 at 12:07:09 PM CDT

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Thank You! (2.00 / 2)

 I appreciate everyones attempts at explaining about voter fraud. I do believe it is feasible for me to vote at both my old address, and then register and vote again at my new address. Now I know this is a democratic party site, but didn't the late Richard Daley of Chicago IL hand over Chicago, which handed Illinois, to JFK to win the 1960 election? Wasn't Mayor Daley a Democrat? If we are going to toss
brick(bat)s, shouldn't we move out of the glass house?
No comments on Augustus or McGovern? I sort of expected there was none.  

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by: billxi @ Wed Jul 30, 2008 at 19:14:07 PM CDT

non sequitur (0.00 / 0)

didn't the late Richard Daley of Chicago IL hand over Chicago, which handed Illinois, to JFK to win the 1960 election? Wasn't Mayor Daley a Democrat? If we are going to toss
brick(bat)s, shouldn't we move out of the glass house?

I don't understand what the problems of the 1960 election that you refer to have to do with election day registration.  Are you just waving your hands and saying "we know there was fraud in Chicago in 1960, ergo EDR is dangerous", even though they didn't have EDR in that election, and even though I've explained how EDR, on balance, makes elections less fraud-prone?  Or do you actually have a logical case to make about how the 1960 election is relevant and illustrates some problem with EDR?  If so, can you explain what you mean?

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by: Cos @ Wed Jul 30, 2008 at 19:29:23 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

double voting (0.00 / 0)

I do believe it is feasible for me to vote at both my old address, and then register and vote again at my new address.

If you vote in two locations within the state of Massachusetts in the same election, using the same name, you will likely get caught and prosecuted.  This is the sort of crime where the personal risk is high, while the personal value to you (whee, one more vote!) is very low, which is why people don't do it.

You can more easily double-vote when you move to another state, because states don't try to correlate new registrations, so you're less likely to get caught if you do that.  EDR has no bearing on that, obviously.  Similarly, you could try to hide your identity and register fraudulently (with an assumed name and address) to try to vote more than once.  Again, you may get caught, though the risk is a little lower.  EDR doesn't have much effect on this, either.  If they can figure out that you've double-voted, they'll figure it out, regardless of when you registered.  But again, as I said, not something that individuals do, because it's a serious crime with high risk and low reward.

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by: Cos @ Wed Jul 30, 2008 at 19:29:38 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Augustus or McGovern (0.00 / 0)

No comments on that because it was irrelevant ad-hominem.

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by: Cos @ Thu Jul 31, 2008 at 09:02:07 AM CDT

[ Parent ]