Voter Fraud Follies or A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Election

I have cast the bones.  I have consulted the cards.  I have watched the stars, drunk the tea, read the leaves.  I have studied the entrails…then chopped them up, sautéed them with onions, garlic and fresh herbs in a bit of butter, then added them to a pan of gravy and observed the pattern it made as it was poured across freshly-made biscuits.  I have even read the Huffington Post, which should tell you just how desperate I’ve been getting for hints as to what lies ahead.

Thus far, all of the omens point to this being one of the messiest election days (and nights) on record.

Some would say it’s mere coincidence that the precise spot where Julius Caesar was murdered has just been found, but I’m not so sure.  At any rate, while Mercury goes retrograde on November 6th, there doesn’t seem to be anything approaching the ominous level of the ‘Ides of March’ around that date.  It seems that all we’re left with is the Internet and our gut instincts to guide us.

Certainly we can expect at least a few cries of ‘voter fraud’!  A report out of North Caroline has raised fears that votes cast for Mitt Romney were tallied as votes for Barack Obama.  This is been attributed to improperly calibrated machines, and supposedly after being adjusted the machines are registering votes properly.  Others have raised concerns about Tagg Romney (Mitt’s oldest) having ties to the company that makes the computerized voting machines used in Ohio.  The presumption is that Team Romney will use these ties to rig machines to transmogrify Obama votes into Romney votes in this critical swing states.  This idea has been rebutted by the Weekly Standard, but I question just how many Democrats will believe the rebuttal, despite liberal thinkprogress.org stating categorically “…there is absolutely no evidence that this crony capitalist network extends to interference with voting machines”.

There have been other rumblings, as well.  The Huffington Post (see? I told you I had been reading it!) has been trumpeting the removal of billboards from the Cincinnati area that state the fact that ‘Voter Fraud is a Felony’, punishable by a $10,000 fine and 3 ½ years in prison.  This article flatly states that “voter fraud is an incredibly rare event which, unfortunately, too often serves as a political boogeyman for those who wish to suppress the vote” and “these "voter fraud" billboards were not placed randomly or evenly across the Ohio landscape. They were placed primarily in urban environments, with high densities of African American voters in cities like Cincinnati, Cleveland and Columbus”.  The insidious intent of these unknown billboarders?  To HuffPo, it’s simple:  “To scare. To intimidate. To confuse,” African-Americans into not voting.  Apparently, reminding these voters of the law, or providing this information to them if they didn’t previously know it, constitutes voter suppression.  That these billboards might also make voters think twice about participating in Democratic schemes to vote multiple times isn’t something that HuffPo is willing to consider.

The response to these heinously factual billboards has been donated signs that say “Hey, Cincinnati, Voting is a Right-Not a Crime!”  Sadly, these signs (which someone other than the Offended Peoples of Cincinnati paid for) neglect to add: “only once, in the district where you live, and only if you’re a citizen”.  I suppose that when ‘rights’ like these are invoked, little things like facts are allowed to slide.

The issue of non-citizen voter (and other) fraud is not a trivial one.  James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas has done a number of videos exposing cases of non-citizen voting, dead people being offered ballots, and voter fraud being embraced in multiple states.  Their YouTube site has over 60 videos, many of which are hidden camera captures of people actively participating in and encouraging voter fraud.  Additionally, a recent report from Colorado claims that at least 441 non-citizens are on the voting rolls in that state, with more questionable voters still under investigation.  In Florida, Federal Judge William Zloch recently ruled that the state could continue to purge its voter rolls of non-citizens right up until the day of the election.  In a hotly-contested case, Zloch wrote, “Certainly, the (National Voter Registration Act) does not require the state to idle on the sidelines until a non-citizen violates the law before the state can act….  And surely the NVRA does not require the state to wait until after that critical juncture — when the vote has been cast and the harm has been fully realized — to address what it views as nothing short of ‘voter fraud.’ ”

Recent history is undoubtedly fueling some of the suspicion of voter fraud from both ends of the political spectrum.  Who can forget the 2000 debacle of the hanging chad?  Many people believe that suspected voter fraud in the 2008 Senate election gave Al Frankin the seat previously held by Norm Coleman, which in turn gave the Democrats their 60^th vote in the Senate, and thus gave the nation Obamacare (by removing the Republican’s ability to filibuster the Affordable Care Act).  We certainly can’t forget the hacked Stratfor emails that allege the McCain campaign had evidence of Democratic ballot box stuffing in Ohio and Pennsylvania on election night, and the candidate chose not to pursue these allegations.  And, no mention of voter fraud would be complete without mentioning ACORN, who a Nevada judge described as "...reprehensible. This is the kind of thing you see in some banana republic, Uruguay or someplace, not in the United States." 

But, never fear!  Despite evidence that "When vote fraud is detected, those caught are nearly always Democrats,", the NAACP has asked the United Nations to intervene in the upcoming election.  The NAACP believes that voter identification laws in 14 states are an attempt to disenfranchise African-American voters.  However, Artur Davis, formerly an Alabama Democrat (and now Virginia Republican) has stated “What I have seen in my state (at that time, Alabama), in my region, is (that) the most aggressive practitioners of voter fraud are local machines who are tied lock, stock and barrel to the special interests in their communities," and “I don't think that any of these (Voter ID) laws...disenfranchise people.”  So, if you see people with funny accents hanging out around your polling place, don’t call Homeland Security—they’re probably just election observers from the UN-affiliated Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and their Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR).  In fact, this mission is already here, having started their mission on October 4^th!

The OSCE/ODIHR team of 13 international experts and 44 long-term observers drawn from 23 presenting states bring with them their extensive democratic experience from such bastions of liberty and freedom as Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Serbia, Ukraine and Russia.  According to an OSCE spokesperson, “They are focusing on a number of areas on the state level, including the legal system, election administration, the campaign, the campaign financing [and] new voting technologies used in the different states.”  In a letter to the OSCE from the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the NAACP and the ACLU, the OSCE observers have been warned about “a coordinated political effort to disenfranchise millions of Americans — particularly traditionally disenfranchised groups like minorities.”

Unlike some, I think this is a WONDERFUL idea!  However, given the controversy that's bound to surround this election, I think we should ask for more observers!  Rather than arrest them, I think we should scatter them liberally in such contentious areas as Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Nevada, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and every other swing area.  If Team Romney were smart, they’d ask the UN for the literally hundreds of international observers it would take to do this.  At the same time, these observers (most of whom could easily be drawn from the international populations of New York (the UN itself) and Washington, D.C. (embassies, etc.) could help Republican AND Democratic poll workers—since both camps absolutely need their own people at these sites—keep the chicanery and shenanigans to a minimum this election.

In short, I think the country will best be served if the Republicans double-down on the Left’s bringing in the UN to supervise the upcoming election. Let them come!  Here in the South, we’ll ply them with sweet tea, fried chicken, barbecue, peach cobbler and pecan pie until they’re far gone in the Itis…and then go about our business while they’re sleeping it off.  Honestly, does anyone really expect these ‘observers’—many of whom have less than extensive experience in elections to begin with—to be able to figure out all the ways the Democrats have found to commit voter fraud, to say nothing of the Republican's schemes?  Bring them on, I say!  Who knows, they might even learn something….

I can’t help but wonder what the DNC and David Axelrod will say when the RNC and Team Romney take my suggestion about calling in the UN to reduce fraud in the upcoming election.  I’m betting it won't be happy, but will be interesting to watch on YouTube!

Regardless, I’m planning on spending election night at home, curled up on the couch with the TV on and plenty of popcorn and fizzy beverages.  It's gonna be a loooooong night!