Leading blog Powerline provides an outstanding analysis of why the identify theft and attempt to frame the Iowa Secretary of State with an ethics violation was not just a Democratic Dirty Trick, but a Crime.

A few years ago, as part of its strategy of facilitating voter fraud as a means of winning close elections, the Democratic Party undertook a campaign to secure as many Secretary of State offices in swing states as possible. From those perches, the Democrats would be in a position to oversee elections and enforce (or decline to enforce) election laws. That strategy has been quite successful, but the Democrats suffered a setback in Iowa in 2010 when conservative Republican Matt Schultz won an upset victory in the Secretary of State race. Since then, Iowa Democrats have targeted Schultz.

That targeting has taken a sinister turn–a criminal one…

South Carolina’s attorney general is asking the U.S. Justice Department for an investigation into potential voter fraud.

Attorney General Alan Wilson has sent details of an analysis by the Department of Motor Vehicles to U.S. Attorney Bill Nettles.

In a letter dated Thursday, Wilson says the analysis found 953 ballots cast by voters listed as dead. In more than 70 percent of those cases, ballots were cast between two months and 76 months after the people died

Full story at the link

The Bangor Daily News reports: Maine’s Secretary of State has levied new allegations of possible voter fraud and again called on lawmakers to address what he believes are deficiencies in the state’s election system.

In an annual report to the Legislature’s Veterans and Legal Affairs Committee on the state’s Central Voter Registration (CVR) system, Charlie Summers said his yearlong review of voter registration data was troubling.

He conceded that most of the problems are related to human errors by municipal officials rather than intentional fraud, but said those errors have contributed to inaccurate and unreliable state voter data.

The data “suggests that a substantial number of noncitizens (over 150) may have registered to vote, and approximately one-third of that number may have actually voted in elections over the past few years,” Summers wrote. “I have turned this information over to the Attorney General for further investigation and to pursue whatever action he deems appropriate.”

Find his written testimony at the link.  As they say statistics is just one of the category of lies.  The level of complexity of the statistical analysis bewilders the common man and one wonders if the Court will find that DOJ was trying to pull the wool over its eyes.  Best review your statistics final exam before following the link. 

In this instance, DOJ may have just entered the category of damn lies.  

Bloomberg with the breaking story.

Reports from Fox and other sources here and here.

Alot of information in the articles but these are the main passages to take away.  The first is some comments from Michael LoPorto’s attorney:
 
“Jackals prey upon the weakest member of the herd. That’s what happened here,” LoPorto’s attorney Michael Feit said of the guilty pleas in which former officials admitted forging ballot applications and submitting them as legitimate votes.

Feit concedes “there is no question” that someone tried to steal the election. “It is awful, it’s despicable, it’s terrible,” he added.

But he insists his client was not a part of what happened, noting neither LoPorto’s DNA nor fingerprints were found on any of the allegedly faked applications. Forgery charges were dropped against LoPorto before the trial began, leaving 29 counts of criminal possession of a forged instrument.

“There is no proof, in my view, that will show … that he knew that what he possessed was a forged instrument,” said Feit, referring to the allegedly faked absentee ballot applications. “Michael LoPorto is not ‘a good ‘ol boy.’ He’s not been a politician all his life. He doesn’t rely on a political job to support himself and his family. He, in fact, got the most votes in this election. He didn’t need torig any election.”

While some will say that voter fraud is non-existent, the reports highlight how deep the fraud and corruption can run at times:

Two veteran Democratic political operatives in Troy said voter fraud is an accepted way of winning elections, and faking absentee ballots was commonplace.

The attorney for those known as the “Madison Nine” for being defendants in a north Florida voting-fraud case says he plans to sue the Florida Department of Law Enforcement over their arrests

Full story at the link.

No voting crime shall go punished as the Left at the Huffingtonpost call it voter suppression.

A packed Washington D.C. courtroom this morning heard a panel of three federal judges debate whether certain parts of the country, including Alabama, still need federal government supervision of their elections to avoid discriminating against minority voters.

Shelby County’s argument that two key sections of the Voting Rights Act are outdated is not only a question of constitutional law, but also a politically-charged question over whether states with an ugly history of blatant race discrimination can be trusted to run fair elections today.

Bert Rein, a lawyer representing Shelby County, told the three judges that newer opinions of the U.S. Supreme Court require that Section 5 of the 1965 voting law – which puts every election-related detail in all or part of 16 states under strict supervision of the Justice Department – be justified by newer proof of discrimination.

“We’re not here to talk about that history, we accept it,” Rein said. “But current burdens must be justified by current needs.”

Full story at the Birmingham News.

This week I am at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference in Charleston.  I speak Friday, squeezed in between Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul.  I will talk about the DOJ and election laws, and will have some news to break.  I am told it will be on CSPAN.  Tabella seems to be picking up the slack here, as usual.

After review of the article in the Des Moines Register , the real lesson to be learned is that human error in counting paper ballots or slips of paper is very possible.  In fact, it is almost probable and that the tabuling of results in this way can cause confusion and errors.  Paper voting has its own set of issues over electronic voting and yes, humans make mistakes.