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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: bentway who wrote (427273)	10/17/2008 8:37:31 AM
From: combjelly	Respond to of 1572326

"You can't answer this simple question Ten - how does a phony registration faked by a homeless person for the name bonus $ translate into a phony vote?" He doesn't need to. After all, their track record on WMD's and such is so good, we should just take them at their word. They would never use faulty intelligence, now would they?

To: bentway who wrote (427273)	10/17/2008 9:03:54 AM
From: Brumar89	1 Recommendation Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1572326

Absentee ballots is one way. Busing groups around to different inner city polling places to vote under different names is another. Example - Washington state - they kept finding absentee ballots till the Democrat won by 129 votes in 2004. Another example: Do absentee ballots facilitate fraud? Lessons from East Chicago — could a statewide election be subverted? Veri Edwards applies for an absentee ballot on Oct. 6 at the county clerk's office in Norwalk, Calif. By Tom Curry National affairs writer msnbc updated 11:27 a.m. CT, Thurs., Oct. 16, 2008 WASHINGTON - If you want a guide to how absentee ballots can be used to subvert an election, the Indiana Supreme Court has one for you. The court’s decision in a case called Pabey v. Pastrick makes for instructive reading — especially in light of the fears some Republicans are voicing that Democrats may resort to fraud to win some states on Nov. 4. The court found that in the 2003 Democratic primary for mayor of East Chicago, Ind., campaign workers for incumbent Mayor Robert Pastrick: pressured and coaxed first-time voters or those who were “less informed or lacking in knowledge of the voting process, the infirm, the poor, and those with limited skills in the English language” to vote by absentee ballot; paid voters in cash for casting absentee ballots; instructed people applying for absentee ballots to phone the Pastrick campaign when the applicant received his or her ballot so that Pastrick supporters could go to their home and “though not authorized by law to do so, ‘assist’ the voter in completing the ballot;” illegally kept a stockpile of unmarked absentee ballots and delivered ballots to voters; lied about whether the person applying for an absentee ballot would in fact be absent on the day of the primary. (Indiana law requires a voter to have a reasonable expectation of being absent from the state or to be ill or caring for an ill person in order to get an absentee ballot.) Pastrick won 5,228 votes to challenger George Pabey’s 4,949 votes. Poll workers fight at senior home Oct. 15: A Democratic poll worker visiting a retirement home is accused of mis-marking a senior citizen's ballot, resulting in a altercation with a Republican poll worker. WKYC's Tom Beres reports. NBC News Channel Judge Steven King, the trial judge in the Pastrick case, found that the 2003 East Chicago mayoral primary “may be a ‘textbook’ example of the chicanery that can attend the absentee vote cast by mail.” Preying on the naive and the needy King said Pastrick campaign workers had preyed on “the naïve, the neophytes, the infirm and the needy” by using “unscrupulous election tactics.” And the judge noted how hard it was to prove that fraudulent absentee voting did in fact tilt the election to Pastrick. People who had taken part in fraudulent absentee voting were reluctant “to candidly discuss the circumstances surrounding their absentee vote,” for fear that they’d “expose themselves to potential criminal liability." The judge added that Pastrick supporters tried to influence witnesses' testimony, including instructing a witness to "feign a lack of knowledge on the witness stand." Forty-seven people either pleaded guilty or were convicted of various crimes as a result of the investigation. Could something similar to the East Chicago case happen statewide in Indiana or other states on Nov. 4? And is the increasing use of absentee ballots adding to the potential for fraud and for a stolen election? Video Alleged voter registration misdeeds Oct. 14: NBC investigative reporter Jim Popkin discusses possible voter registration fraud by the community organizing group ACORN. MSNBC Indiana Secretary of State Todd Rokita, a Republican, said, “if the things described in the Pabey case can happen in good old Indiana you bet it’s happening in other parts of the country.” Reforms implemented in Indiana Rokita said his state had put reforms into effect since the 2003 East Chicago case. As a companion bill to Indiana photo identification law, (which was later upheld by the Supreme Court), the state legislature also passed a law to make electioneering in the presence of someone with an absentee ballot a crime. He also noted it is a crime for a person to handle an absentee ballot if he is not the voter or the voter’s spouse. Barnard University political science professor Lorraine Minnite, who is writing a book on absentee voting, said, “There could be an advantage in absentee balloting to those who intend to commit fraud, but I also think there are reasonable means available to protect voters against the kinds of predations observed in the Pabey case." For example, Minnite said, "I don't think partisan groups such as party organizations should be allowed to request absentee ballots for voters, unless authorized by the voter because the voter cannot complete the application process himself or herself (due to something like illiteracy or a disability).” Minnite suggests another precaution: The list of voters who have requested absentee ballots should not be publicly disclosed. “Knowledge of which voters are voting which ways (in person or absentee) is of most use to partisans who might like to deploy tactics of intimidation or fraud to swing elections,” Minnite explained. She said whether absentee ballots are inherently more vulnerable to fraud “depends on the procedures in place to protect the voter from intimidation or manipulation.” She points to Oregon as an example of an absentee voting system which works well. Oregon phased-in its vote-by-mail system over a number of years. “The phase-in allowed the state to figure out what kinds of procedures it needed to ensure ballot security, and also allowed voters to become accustomed to the rules,” she said. msnbc.msn.com