Voter Fraud

Why would the Obama Administration or the Justice Department be up in arms over the insistence that a voter have an ID to prove that they are who they say they are? The answer is simple and two fold. The first is that the left and a good portion of the Democratic Party understand the enormity of this election and want to be able to win at all costs, including cheating. The second is to heighten racial tension with the goal of increasing minority turnout with the theme; those evil Republicans want to deny your right to vote and are attempting voter suppression.

The facts and common sense says otherwise, and with the increasing number of voter fraud cases popping up, along with solid documentation by scholar Larry Sabato and writer John Fund to show that voter fraud is real, there is no question that the integrity of the ballot box is under assault. Nor are Republicans the only one concerned as many Democrats have realized that the sanctity of the ballot box is a necessity to ensure faith in the process and that every vote counted is a legal vote.

An overwhelming Democratic majority in Rhode Island passed a voter ID law, and as one Black legislator who supported the law noted, it was about doing the right thing. While the leadership of many minority organizations are fighting ID laws, there are enough Black and Hispanic legislators who understand that the precincts most negatively affected by fraudulent ballots are minority precincts. The first myth to put to rest is that this is a Republican plot, but point out that there are many Democrats and liberals who understand that voting fraud denies, not just legitimacy to the election process, but devalues the vote of legal voters. The attempt by the left to turn this into a major human right crisis not only devalues the ballot box but undermine the democratic process itself.

The second myth is that voter ID will restrict voter turnout among minorities, but the opposite has happened. Southern States like Georgia and Mississippi along with Midwestern States like Indiana have seen minority voter turnout both in real terms as well as percentage of the voter population increase significantly after Voter ID laws came into effect. The reason is for there were issues and candidates that led minorities to vote and in politics, issues and candidates are the driving point for voter turnout just as economic concerns led to an increased turnout among conservative and Tea Party voters in the 2010 midterm elections. Many minorities increased their voter turnout in 2008 as they proved decisive in Obama’s victory.

Many Americans support voter ID laws for two simple reasons. The first being that picture IDs are required for many basic things, from driving an automobile to buying cigarettes or going to movies. So requiring a picture ID for a voter ID is not any more discriminatory than being forced to have a picture ID to drive a car, plus the facts that minority voter turnout has increased in states with voter IDs. The second reason is that most Americans are familiar with voter fraud having a significant history, as any native of Chicago knows, the dead often rose to vote Democratic in key elections. The United States attorney estimated that nearly 100,000 votes cast in Chicago were fraudulent in the 1982 gubernatorial election. According to one report, 55 members of ACORN were convicted of registration fraud in 11 states as 400,000 voters registration of out of 1.3 million turned in by ACORN workers were rejected. Liberal Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for a 2008 court decision upholding Indiana ID law, ”There is no question about legitimacy or importance of a state ‘s interest in counting only eligible voters.”

This past year, there have been investigations in ten states resulting in indictments, and with all but one case, involved Democrats. This explains why the Democratic Party and much of the left have been fighting ID laws, they want the ability to tilt the elections in their direction and that obviously includes cheating. I began this essay with the statement, that any political movement or groups who opposes Voter IDs do so with the idea of wanting to cheat. I added that this gives the left one more opportunity to scare minorities by lying that Republicans want to deny them their right to vote. In a society where pictures ID are required to fly or buy booze, among other things, the idea that insisting on a voter ID is any more racist than requiring a ID to buy booze or fly stretches the imagination, and that is being charitable. To repeat one more time, to oppose voter ID is to favor illegal voters voting.