4 ms·

You claim that there are a significant number of fraudulent votes happening. The corollary of what you're attesting to is that Kris Kobach and many other folks

You claim that there are a significant number of fraudulent votes happening. The corollary of what you're attesting to is that Kris Kobach and many other folks responsible for enforcement of the laws are utterly and completely incompetent. I don't have time to track down where I did the math, but even being very generous with the claims of fraud (assuming that they're wildly overstating) and assuming that Kansas being full of those Fine Upstanding Conservative Religious Citizens had only half the fraud rate of the country as a whole, that means that Kobach's office was unable to find basically ANY of the tens of thousands of Kansans voting fraudulently. This is a situation that holds true when you look at the other places where there are widespread claims of voter fraud and the people making those claims. Sure there are a few cases (e.g. Ann Coulter's fraudulent registration, a few voters who voted in multiple places including at least one non-citizen, etc.) but not very many. As for Kobach, he actually got 4 convictions in 2016 (for elections in 2010 - 2014): http://www.kansas.com/news/local/crime/article75545277.html http://www.kansas.com/news/local/crime/article75545277.html Looking at a different state, seems that Washington State is a hotbed of fraud - the state has identified 72 cases of suspected vote fraud in the 2016 election. https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/washington/articles/2017-10-29/sheriff-recommends-4-voter-fraud-cases-for-prosecution https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/washington/articles/...

wang_li 9y ago
> You claim that there are a significant number of fraudulent votes happening. If you mean "significant" in the sense of large, then no I did not. If you mean "significant" in the sense of meaningful, then I assert that even one illegal vote cast is significant as it disenfranchises a legitimate voter. One group has found that between 2011 and 2017, 1852 ballots were cast by illegal aliens in Virginia.[1] 1: https://publicinterestlegal.org/blog/report-5500-noncitizens-discovered-voter-rolls-virginia/ https://publicinterestlegal.org/blog/report-5500-noncitizens...
- Bud 9y ago
  The Public Interest Legal Foundation, which you cited, is a right-wing crank group. https://www.mediamatters.org/research/2017/06/07/right-wing-media-hype-flawed-report-illegal-voting-pushed-serial-conservative-misinformers/216819 https://www.mediamatters.org/research/2017/06/07/right-wing-...
  - wang_li 9y ago
    Your media matters link doesn't provide an academic work showing that the cited statistic is incorrect. The closest it comes to doing so is by linking a paper by the Brennan Center which says in a footnote that the PILF report uses an unreliable methodology. That's about what you can expect from a left-wing advocacy group. Here is the footnote in full: >See, e.g., Public Interest Legal Foundation, Alien Invasion in Virginia, 2016, https://publicinterestlegal.org/ https://publicinterestlegal.org/ files/Report_Alien-Invasion-in-Virginia.pdf; Public Interest Legal Foundation, Aliens & Felons, 2016, https://publicinterestlegal.org/files/Philadelphia-Litigation-Report.pdf https://publicinterestlegal.org/files/Philadelphia-Litigatio.... Despite using unreliable methodology, these reports, authored by an organization that promotes the myth of widespread voter fraud, identified few noncitizens on the rolls.
- fencepost 9y ago
  How about if by "significant" I mean "has enough impact on elections to merit countermeasures that have been statistically shown to disproportionately reduce election participation [oh noes!] by brown people and people with lower incomes (regardless of race)?" How about if by "significant" I mean "has enough impact on elections to merit countermeasures that cost at least tens of thousands of dollars per fraudulent vote, but probably hundreds of thousands of dollars per fraudulent vote?" Is there truly no more cost-effective way to spend that money on ensuring election integrity? Perhaps with little things like voter-verifiable paper trails that actually allow auditing of results? Why, it's almost as if the oh-so-unfortunate side effect of minority and poor disenfranchisement is the purpose and "preventing vote fraud" is just the excuse. I'm sure Paul "our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down" Weyrich would have been heartbroken by that. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GBAsFwPglw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GBAsFwPglw I also looked through the report cited and found it remarkably light on actual facts. They make a big point of Maureen Erickson's cancellation for being a non-citizen in 2012 and her providing a Guatemalan address. They also note that she'd voted in 14 elections. Honestly, I'm surprised that they also included that the most recent of those was in 2008, 4 years before her registration was cancelled. So what happened in those intervening 4 years? Did this obviously Hispanic woman get thrown out of the country? Or perhaps she moved, married, emigrated, etc. and stopped voting in the US. I'd classify that whole report as long on the fearmongering and short on the evidence. Edit: I decided that was a unique enough name to look up, and lo and behold: "In fact, Todd Erickson said, his wife is an American citizen and while she does work as a missionary in Guatemala, her cancellation from Prince William County’s voter rolls in 2012 was a mistake resulting from the confusing voter registration system." and from the well-known lefty rag the Washington Times no less. Edit: missing words

wang_li 9y ago

> You claim that there are a significant number of fraudulent votes happening. If you mean "significant" in the sense of large, then no I did not. If you mean "significant" in the sense of meaningful, then I assert that even one illegal vote cast is significant as it disenfranchises a legitimate voter. One group has found that between 2011 and 2017, 1852 ballots were cast by illegal aliens in Virginia.[1] 1: https://publicinterestlegal.org/blog/report-5500-noncitizens-discovered-voter-rolls-virginia/ https://publicinterestlegal.org/blog/report-5500-noncitizens...

Bud 9y ago
The Public Interest Legal Foundation, which you cited, is a right-wing crank group. https://www.mediamatters.org/research/2017/06/07/right-wing-media-hype-flawed-report-illegal-voting-pushed-serial-conservative-misinformers/216819 https://www.mediamatters.org/research/2017/06/07/right-wing-...
- wang_li 9y ago
  Your media matters link doesn't provide an academic work showing that the cited statistic is incorrect. The closest it comes to doing so is by linking a paper by the Brennan Center which says in a footnote that the PILF report uses an unreliable methodology. That's about what you can expect from a left-wing advocacy group. Here is the footnote in full: >See, e.g., Public Interest Legal Foundation, Alien Invasion in Virginia, 2016, https://publicinterestlegal.org/ https://publicinterestlegal.org/ files/Report_Alien-Invasion-in-Virginia.pdf; Public Interest Legal Foundation, Aliens & Felons, 2016, https://publicinterestlegal.org/files/Philadelphia-Litigation-Report.pdf https://publicinterestlegal.org/files/Philadelphia-Litigatio.... Despite using unreliable methodology, these reports, authored by an organization that promotes the myth of widespread voter fraud, identified few noncitizens on the rolls.
fencepost 9y ago
How about if by "significant" I mean "has enough impact on elections to merit countermeasures that have been statistically shown to disproportionately reduce election participation [oh noes!] by brown people and people with lower incomes (regardless of race)?" How about if by "significant" I mean "has enough impact on elections to merit countermeasures that cost at least tens of thousands of dollars per fraudulent vote, but probably hundreds of thousands of dollars per fraudulent vote?" Is there truly no more cost-effective way to spend that money on ensuring election integrity? Perhaps with little things like voter-verifiable paper trails that actually allow auditing of results? Why, it's almost as if the oh-so-unfortunate side effect of minority and poor disenfranchisement is the purpose and "preventing vote fraud" is just the excuse. I'm sure Paul "our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down" Weyrich would have been heartbroken by that. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GBAsFwPglw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GBAsFwPglw I also looked through the report cited and found it remarkably light on actual facts. They make a big point of Maureen Erickson's cancellation for being a non-citizen in 2012 and her providing a Guatemalan address. They also note that she'd voted in 14 elections. Honestly, I'm surprised that they also included that the most recent of those was in 2008, 4 years before her registration was cancelled. So what happened in those intervening 4 years? Did this obviously Hispanic woman get thrown out of the country? Or perhaps she moved, married, emigrated, etc. and stopped voting in the US. I'd classify that whole report as long on the fearmongering and short on the evidence. Edit: I decided that was a unique enough name to look up, and lo and behold: "In fact, Todd Erickson said, his wife is an American citizen and while she does work as a missionary in Guatemala, her cancellation from Prince William County’s voter rolls in 2012 was a mistake resulting from the confusing voter registration system." and from the well-known lefty rag the Washington Times no less. Edit: missing words