Melowese Richardson, a poll worker who was convicted of multiple counts of voter fraud and just released on probation from a five year prison sentence, was brought up on stage to rousing applause as Rev. Al Sharpton joined State Representative Alicia Reece at a rally to kick off the drive for an Ohio “Voter’s Bill of Rights” amendment.
My head is scattered all over my hotel room, so I am struggling to be articulate, restrained and calm.
The cynicism of Democrats on the voter fraud issue approaches…oh, hell, I can’t do it!
HOW DARE THEY?
For over a year, the news media and Democrats have condemned reasonable Republican measures to prevent voter fraud as racially motivated and designed to keep honest, civic-minded minorities from the polls. Now a woman who not only voted four times for President Obama in the last election by stealing the identities of others, but who was also a poll worker, and professed no remorse whatsoever is hailed as a hero at a Democratic rally. Says a Cincinnati website: there was “immediate outrage from Republicans on Twitter.” No outrage from Democrats? Well, why should there be…after all, they apparently like voter fraud, and object to any efforts to restrict it as “racist.” Heck, the complaints about the applause Richardson got must be racist too. Besides, as Cincinnati National Action Network President Bobby Hilton, who invited her onstage to get the love, said,”We did not celebrate or applaud a convicted felon. We congratulated a lady with a health issues coming home to take care of her sick sister.”
At a voting rights rally. Sure, Bobby. Wink,wink, nudge, nudge. Who wouldn’t believe that? And she’s such an admirable example of an American citizen, too…in a addition to the voting fraud, she was previously convicted of threatening to kill a witness in a criminal case against her brother; of theft, drunken driving; and of assault and battery in a bar fight. But she was willing to go to jail for voting four times for Barack Obama, exactly the kind of heroic acts those racist Republicans want to block.
This would be a profound embarrassment for the anti-voter ID crowd, but luckily, only the “conservative news media” is reporting it. After all, it isn’t real news. So Al Sharpton will continue to be featured on MSNBC as a respectable pundit, routinely calling Republicans racists for falsely asserting that voter fraud exists. And the Obama administration will continue to treat him and his uncritical followers as an elders statesman, because he is part of the media barricade that helps Democrats achieve their objectives by any means possible.
I’ve got to call the hotel maid now, and have a big tip ready. What a mess.
___________________
Ethics Alarms 
That reminds me of something I heard many years ago from an elderly Ulsterman (Ulster also being the birthplace of the slogan, “vote early, vote often”). He said, “It was one thing when they were voting dead men, but when they started voting our dead men…”.
Jack,
I’ll say it again…. an ideology that cannot be advanced by honest means in an open republic is probably not an ideology conducive to the maintenance and health of a republic.
That just about sums up the entire political debate of our day, Tex!
But Jack, she was cheating to help Obama. We all know Obama is good, and everyone against Obama is evil. So she wasn’t doing something bad, she was breaking petty rules to make sure that the right person won, why can’t you just understand that?
The complete degradation of the democratic election has arrived. Soon, very soon, we’ll be getting poll watchers from the Ukraine to watch and make sure we follow the process correctly.
Wyo, we in Texas had observers from the UN at our last gubernatorial election. Arrested a few and the rest got lost somewhere, I think.
I never thought anyone would try that after you tarred and feathered the observers from D.C. 🙂
The observers were actually quite amusing…
They openly wondered how it was that picture ID was not required to vote. Really shat on the “it’s racist” bullshit…
They should be grateful that we refrained from hanging them, Alex.
Does anyone believe that bringing Melowese Richardson out for applause is anything but a huge in-your-face moment. Your head was supposed to explode, and the exploding heads of conservatives is nothing less than a triumph for them.
Why just conservatives? How about “Americans”?
Because it SHOULD be “American” heads exploding, but the people behind this crap know that it isn’t. They know that their base will be totally uncritical because there’s a (D) after the candidates name and the melanin is right, and they know that anyone who complains will be dismissed as “Conservatives were upset.”
This moment marks the first instance of my wishing that ‘tgt’ was still active here. He once treated me to a brief (for him) 7,500 word “proof” that voter fraud was simultaneously non-existent AND only done by conservatives.
Stark evidence like this combined with logical demonstration of the error of his political ideology is the large reason why he is no longer active (like most of the Leftists).
They’ll say it’s aggressive rhetoric like Ablative’s, but I suspect that is only a minor fraction of why they bailed… the rest is the blatantly obvious malfeasance and malice of the Leftist ideology laid bare for all to see that convicted them. Rather than change, they ran.
“Stark”, not “Start…”
What makes that funny is that they have a classic bully reaction. First they whine, then they bluster, then they complain to the playground monitor: “Jack, although it’s your blog, I find the language of some here to be…blah, blah, blah”, then they run.
Have you looked at some of the frankly liberal blogs? Those people are horrible.
I never get sick of those bitch-fests from folks like Bruce or Jonny….
I print them out, and am considering framing them.
(fixed “start”)
Thanks! My fingers and iPhone…
As only he could do, Joe. Dislogic flowed from his fingers like water from a fire hydrant!
“start” = “stark”….
There should be a national outrage at this. Democratic operatives praising voter fraud? Sure, especially since it was for their candidate.
When I was in college in Chicago, I remember talking with a Chicago professor who told me that in the Daley days she remember voting four times when she was 12 years old… No surprise regarding Boss Richard Daley, but honestly, I’ve been naive enough to think that national party reps do not support voter fraud.
Our system is broken by Republicans in Congress, they say. How about stealing elections? How far does this voter fraud go? Nixon was impeached for subverting the Constitution and the voting process. The tactics may differ but the result is the same.
WHY ISN’T THE MEDIA ALL OVER THIS???? (A rhetorical question, because we all know why.)
“The world falls apart; the center cannot hold.”
Props to Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters for actually following through with charges that resulted in her serving jail time, however short. I doubt it will do much to deter this behavior in the future but I give him credit for trying.
The actual story Jack is referring to just reaffirms to me why stereotypes exist. There really are groups of people (be it political, race, religion, sports fans, baby boomers, whoever/whatever) that behave the same way over and over and over again – which also reaffirms my belief that profiling can be a useful tool, be it used by the police, the TSA or even a woman walking to her car alone when a stranger approaches. The stereotype might not be correct every time but it gives you a good place to start . . .
As perhaps the last remaining “Leftist” (I hate that term) “Democrat” commenter on this blog, I can only say one thing: HOLY S**T, BATMAN! I feel like a voter without a party. My left-leaning liberal progressive values haven’t changed, but my opinion of the current POTUS and Administration and the Democratic Party and various cheerleaders has been steadily falling into the abyss. I am so embarrassed, demoralized, disgusted, despondent, infuriated, and truly hurt by what they have done. I can’t help but wonder what the heck is going on in the minds and hearts and souls of these people.
If “Leftist” is troubling, would the term “Statist” or “Collectivist” be better?
No
Speaking as a center-left sort of fella, those are still rather loaded, considering the associations of those words with, say, Stalin’s ruthless collectivization of Russian agriculture, or even the comparatively more effective corporatist policies of someone like Park Chung-Hee.
The terms are synonymous and accurate in reference to the present administration and the ideology it represents… whether the terms are liked or not.
Beth and Jan still come around, as does Zoe…
Of course, you’re right, but it often feels lonely here in the far corner of Ethics Alarms Land.
No need to feel alone. Some of us on the “Right” have felt that over the actions of previous administrations (except for the media cheerleading part, I’ll let you keep that one).
Patrice – as someone who’s always identified herself as right-of-centre, I feel your pain. My party left me long ago.
My sympathies.
How would voter id laws prevent the type of voter fraud that Richardson engaged in? She voted by absentee ballot, then in-person. Voter id was not in effect then, yet they still managed to get her. At best, voter id might prevent someone from impersonating someone else, in person at the polls, but how often does that happen? Especially compared to the number of people it prevents from voting at all. As a balancing test, voter id laws don’t seem worth it.
The problem with “but they caught her” is that her votes were already counted by the time they did so.
For an electoral system to be useful and something that can be trusted, you have to stop the fraud before it has any impact on the outcome.
And again, it has never been shown that voter ID actually prevents anyone from voting. Just because you keep saying it doesn’t actually make it true.
A purist would also insist on one day voting (no early voting)… Perhaps a national holiday; an “Election Day”.
A purist would insist, as well, on absentee ballots ONLY for very exceptional cases, sucks as the military or the severely infirm.
I would love to see Election day as a legitimate national holiday with some sort of mandatory time off. It’s one of the few instances that I’m rather comfortable with the government dictating detailed policy to the private sector. Maybe not no work at all, but some sort of enforced extra time to vote as part of the cost of doing business in the US.
I could certainly see a skeleton force manning necessary services at a bare minimum, who form a small exception that get to vote 1 day early.
It would take some interesting logistics. Aside from what we think of as necessary services- hospitals, fire, police- you get into things like needing bus/taxi/subway operators to get people to their polling places.
Poll workers are paid right? Every one or two days a poll location is paid to be open early, easily would translate into another polling location open on Election Day, would it not?
Greater dispersion of locations can vastly reduce individual burdens to vote.
But yes, allowance would be made for certain minimal necessary services.
True, but keeping one polling location open for two days is still significantly cheaper than opening two different locations for one day each- you don’t have to double up on all of the hardware and supplies, and you can probably have a lower training budget by training one group of volunteers to work both days rather than two groups as well. So it’s not a one to one.
Again, I like the idea, but even assuming there was buy-in and no political jockeying (not very likely) there’d be all kinds of logistical hurdles.
As a veteran election official myself, I’ve considered all these arguments, guys. I’m in agreement that absentee voting needs to be kept to a minimum, as it is the form of voting most vulnerable to fraud. I also like the traditional precinct polls, as it draws neighborhoods together in a common purpose and is usually easier to access than regional early voting centers. However, early voting not only has the advantage of scheduling, but allows busy working people to vote from any convenient place in the county without being sent away to another polls because of their error or that of the County Clerk’s election division. Another advantage to early voting is that the staffs can be chosen from a broader area (no cliques!) and their activities more easily monitored. There are, as we all know, any number of precincts (especially in inner city areas) where corruption is not only rampant, but institutionalized. There are too many of these for poll watchers to visit… and when they do, they are often subjected to intimidation tactics. Early voting polls are not immune to this, either, but are less liable to it. Also, early voting requires much less staffwork and fewer workers, as the voting process is spread out over roughly two weeks. In the final analysis, though, the process depends on good, honest people being in charge of things on all levels. Otherwise, it all becomes meaningless, regardless of method.
+1
On a previous election in my home country my father was hospitalized after having a heart attack. On the day of the election he hounded his doctor to give him a pass to go out and vote. Since that day, every single time I miss an election I feel guilty – and Dad has yet to miss one.
Such*. Such as the military…
iPhone….
It probably wouldn’t have stopped her specific fraud- unless, that is, the system linked names of submitted absentee ballots so that running the ID would turn up an error. If the law only called for “the poll worker makes sure you have an ID” then it wouldn’t have stopped her.
What this case DOES illustrate is that the Democrats’ contention that voter fraud is a fantasy invented by Rebublicans to cover up racist laws is utter hogwash. However I’m with you to a point- the law should be designed to fit the problem, not designed to fit some problem that’s sort of like the problem.
She actually worked for the Board of Elections (one reason she was prosecuted harsher than others) so she may have used insider knowledge and accessibility to her (and Obama’s) advantage.
I worked the polls in Hamilton County (same county that this occurred) and was even a precinct judge for a few years. I finally quit because I got to the point I dreaded the days and wasn’t comfortable signing off on “good enough”. The rules were constantly cast aside out of ignorance, laziness or the ever present ‘this is how we’ve always done it’ excuse. It was an uphill battle with some of the old timers I worked with and nothing ever changed. I finally decided I had done my civic duty long enough and had signed my name to the ‘envelopes’ for the last time.
Frankly, I am mystified that this kind of fraud is possible and not particularly unusual in this day and age. This is the digital age, isn’t it? Why is voter record-keeping such a challenge that ordinary people can scam the system? I really don’t see how there is any excuse for this kind of corruption to be possible.
In class. I know the answer…. Gimme 40 minutes…
OK, it is a challenge because of a couple of things…
First, the systems that run the voter rolls are probably the age of most freshmen in highschool… This is old tech, and it doesn’t like heavy workloads, which is what would happen during the heavy periods (before and after normal office hours) – to keep the system up to date would require constant pushes of information to and from the main voter rolls.
That dovetails into the next problem: connectivity. To keep those updates happening, every polling place in every city and county in each state would have to be able to connect in some fashion to the main server. This is usually done, I believe, via a 3G or 4G LTE card in the laptops used. This is great if there is really good cell coverage in the area and cell reception in a building, but often that isn’t true. So you would need some other method to get the updates to and from the main Rolls.
And then there is training. No offense, old folks, but old people aren’t that great with technology. It is getting better, but I taught someone last week how to do find/replace in Word. And this person was younger than me. This means that at least one tech guy has to be available for each polling place, because if the system goes down, you can’t wait 30 minutes for IT to arrive to fix the issue. Not to mention the programs they use are, shall we say, not exactly user friendly.
And it all comes down to money. The cost to make sure every polling place is connected (and let’s be honest, that is the only way it can work) would be high. Not to mention that a lot of the solutions don’t work for a lot of areas. Huge swaths of Texas, Missouri, Montana, etc would not have very good coverage/connectivity, just off the top of my head.
No, sadly, the only real way to make sure it gets stopped at the start is making people show an ID, limiting the early voting window, not allowing people to vote on the same day they register, and cut back on absentee ballots.
But none of those things will happen…
Wow, you must vote at some seriously high tech polls! The only computer at the polls in Hamilton County is the eScan that you insert your ballot in and that system is only a few years old. Absolutely everything is done by hand, including the actual ballot being filled out by the voter. Here’s a link to ‘Voting 101’ for Hamilton County voters if you have 2 minutes for a good laugh: http://boe.hamilton-co.org/voting-on-election-day/voting-equipment.aspx
Anything can go wrong from human error, ignorance or even indifference. The most likely at the polls I worked was workers NOT using a provisional ballot envelope (bright yellow if memory serves me and the ballots do not get scanned) to signify there was something special or questionable about this ballot – new address, change of name, etc. Instead these ballots were allowed to be cast with all others. That is a huge problem – votes are being counted that might not have been valid. I think for most workers it’s ignorance or laziness, I really don’t think it’s intentional to fraud the system. Just like anything, if you don’t do it all the time it’s easy to forget the details of ‘how-to’.
Now having said all that bear in mind all poll workers must attend (and are paid for) class each election for a refresher course, so there really is no excuse for all the sloppiness that goes on. And anybody that is responsible for making sure the system is fair but instead intentionally frauds it should find themselves in prison, not at a coming-out party!
True enough…
But the question was why don’t we have a system that makes similar fraud impossible…
If that would happen or at least close to a ‘fool proof’ (heavy on the fool) system I’m willing to resume my civic duty.
It is completely possible to build a fraud free system using computers and there are models out there. It will never happen because raaaaaacist. And because no one wants a fraud proof system.
Sorry if I stepped on your answer Scott.
You’re oversimplifying, really. The technical issues are real, as Scott laid out. You’d have to do a pretty significant reworking to get reasonably close to an ideal fraud-free system, and people resist large-scale change for a lot of reasons other than race-baiting.
All that is lacking is will. If the process would give an advantage to the current ruling party there would be a stampede to get it done. (By current ruling party I’m assuming a party that would be effective at real life things like overcoming political playoffs long enough to design effective computer systems.)
Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. must be rolling over in his grave now.
He started rolling in grave as soon as his cause of equality was hijacked by the race baiters and the Left.
That happened as soon as he breathed his last, too.
Ditto what Patrice said above. It is inexcusable.
Imagine organizers of a rally in opposition to abolishing legal protections for those accused of rape bringing up Philip Garrido and Vinson Filyaw up on stage to roaring applause.
This is analogous to that.
Exactly.
I have heard that some college campuses, when dealing with accusations of sexual assault or sexual harassment, have “kangaroo courts” where the accused is not even allowed to know the nature of the accusation. A campaign against such practices would forfeit credibility if they rbought out Vinson filyaw and Philip Garrido as speakers.
(I assume you are familiar with what they actually did.)
No. Those names are not part of ordinary discussion here in Australia, so I know nothing about them beyond what was hinted earlier.