“Florida: 3,000 Voter Registrations List a UPS Store as a Residence”


Voter Fraud? If they’re not catching the easy stuff, what else are they “missing”?



Inaccurate voter rolls in Florida:


 


“Supervisors are tasked with maintaining an accurate voter roll. One of the requirements on the Supervisors is to ensure that voters provide a legal residence address. Yet a December 2013 analysis shows more than 3,000 voter registrations statewide listing their residence address at a UPS store, potentially illegally.”


Inaccurate voter rolls invite voter fraud



Inaccurate voter rolls invite voter fraud, and not just in Alabama:


 


“Voter rolls that do not — and obviously cannot — accurately reflect the number of registered voters in a county open the door to potential fraud.”



The diversity of problems that can corrupt the election process, from inept management to multiple avenues of fraud, require multiple solutions – a fact that the “voter ID won’t prevent this problem” crowd often ignores. 

But the more inaccurate the voter rolls are, the more important the commonsense safeguard of photo voter ID becomes because, as the bipartisan Carter-Baker commission noted in its 2005 recommendation to adopt photo voter ID, “Election officials need to make sure that the person arriving at the polling site is the same one that is named on the registration list.”

Inaccurate voter rolls also exacerbate the problem of mail ballot fraud, which even the staunchest voter ID opponents say is where the “real voter fraud” occurs.   

Yet voter fraud deniers, taking their lead from Eric Holder’s Department of Justice, routinely fight both voter ID laws and voter roll cleanup efforts enacted by states working to ensure honest and fair elections that inspire public confidence.

  
 

Al Gore: “Big Money is part of hacking of American Democracy”

Politico Magazine interviews the speech regulator – Al Gore.   He even inserted the Koch brothers as a boogeyman.  Gore is a multi-millionaire pointing fingers at “Big Money” yet he plans to spend $300 million in issue advocacy on climate change.  

PM: Define the political tipping point. Is that a moment in American politics?
AG: Every issue is paralyzed now because our democracy has been hacked and we’re suffering from what some have called demosclerosis.Big money is now at toxic levels.
…PM: Sen. John McCain supported cap and trade but backed away from it when President Obama was elected. He had his primary that he was thinking about in 2010.
AG: Hello! The Koch brothers and the others who operate the way they do have worked overtime to put fear in the hearts of Republicans that if they as much as breathe a favorable breath about solving the climate crisis they’re going to get a well-financed primary opponent. And so they’re all running scared. And this is part of the hacking of American democracy. Money. Big money has paralyzed American democracy to a shocking extent. Now it can change. And it will change.

“McCutcheon Restores Power to Congressional Campaigns”

Efforts by campaign finance reformers to limit the flow of money into the campaign finance system have not just failed, they have instead diverted that flow into unaccountable side streams. Now, true reformers should acknowledge that McCutcheon could well bring a larger percentage of political spending into the sunlight, rather than bemoan it as the latest decision signaling the end of America’s democracy.

Voter fraud risk keeps Maryland Board of Elections from certifying online ballot-marking system


“Sanity prevailed”

The Baltimore Sun reports on the Board’s decision:

[T]he State Board of Elections refused to move forward with part of the plan amid fears it would open the door to widespread fraud…


 


“Sanity prevailed,” said Michael Greenberger, a University of Maryland law professor and founder of its Center for Health and Homeland Security. “If this system had been adopted, Maryland would have had a voting system that was the most subject to fraud in the country.”



Board members were reportedly “troubled by an IT security assessment conducted for the state by a firm that has never performed Internet security tests on election systems” and “didn’t study voter fraud risks at the front end of the voting system where ballots are requested online.”


Florida so-called non-political redistricting lawsuits had partisan Democrats plotting behind the scenes

Tampa Tribune Online (TBO) reports on how partisan Democrats were behind a lawsuit and so-called non-political redistricting maps submitted to the Court:
Court documents and emails that are part of the redistricting lawsuit show that the map was drawn and paid for by Democratic consultants in consultation with the Florida Democratic Party, which is no longer involved in the lawsuit.

…Days after the meeting, that map was submitted into evidence as an alternative plan as part of the lawsuit. The suit was officially filed by groups including the League of Women Voters of Florida and the National Council of La Raza, a Hispanic civil rights group.

Plaintiffs in the case argue that congressional maps passed by lawmakers in 2012 are political documents that violate Amendment 6, one of the so-called “Fair District” amendments passed by voters in 2010. The amendments were an attempt to remove politics from the redistricting process by no longer allowing new maps to explicitly “favor or disfavor a political party.”

..The lawsuit is being bankrolled by the National Democratic Redistricting Trust, which was created in 2009 to “provide legal support for Democratic redistricting programs,” according to its website. It’s the group leading the lawsuit.  “Final say would … come from recommendations from the attorneys, and it would go through the Trust,” said Brian Smoot, the trust’s director, during a 2013 deposition taken as part of the case.