voter fraud

The Party of Treason

/ KMac / Leave a comment

Have you ever heard the philosophy that states “if someone tells you, and shows you who they are, believe them”? Trump has been telling us, yelling to us, and showing us that he’s a wannabe dictator who will use racism, hatred and fear mongering rhetoric and tactics to achieve power. He has expressed open admiration for other despots around the world.

(Shay Horse/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

There was never a good excuse for supporting Trump as a political leader, he proved himself right out of the gate to be the antithesis of true American values. The first red flag indicating he’s a dictatorial leader was when he disparaged an entire race of people by stating falsely that Mexicans coming over the border are rapists, drug dealers and murderers. He further implied that Mexico as a country was purposely sending “their worst” people to the U.S. The implication of course is that very few if any Mexican immigrants are good people. 

Same goes for Islam, he spent much of his Twitter time and public appearances spreading false information about Muslims, that thousands of them were cheering and celibrating 9/11, he pushed for a travel ban to and from Muslim countries, suggested we shut down the nations mosques or at least spy on them. 

He encouraged violence and intimidation against dissenters and the reporters. 

These are all things a dictator does without even mentioning the vulgar personality traits that would usually sink a candidate. But as Trump himself observed about his bizarre followers, he wouldn’t lose a single one even if he shot a person on 5th Avenue. He knows what kind of base is supporting him. 

He has since proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that not only would he lie, cheat and steal to get power, but he would also engage in a coup d’etat to keep it. Add traitor to the list of Trump’s undesirable traits. 

He spent the months leading up to the election grooming his willing base for a possible violent overthrow of the U.S. government by reinforcing certain key falsehoods. He demonized the press as a conspirator working with the Democrats, he has attacked the integrity of the election system by stating hundreds of times that it’s rigged against him. 

He thought he could rig the system himself by installing rabid loyalists, or at least people he thought were blindly loyal, in key positions to “legally” overturn any result that didn’t reelect him. 

He thought his appointees on the Supreme Court would overturn any undesired election results. He was wrong. 

He thought U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr would conjure up some fabricated evidence that would overturn the election. Wrong. 

When all else fails, lead an insurrection. 

What any would-be dictator needs to successfully overthrow their government is large grassroots support from the population, support from loyalists in key government segments, and support from the military. He has the support of some 75 million Americans as evident by the election results. He has the support of nearly all the Republicans in congress. 

He doesn’t have the courts, and he couldn’t get the military. Thank God. Because that’s how close we came to living in an Orwellian nightmare with Trump as president for life. 

In November 2020, after the election Trump took the highly unusual step of firing three high ranking Pentagon officials and replacing them with Trump loyalists. Apparently he thought that would give him the military. He was wrong.  

A rally was being organized for Jan 6, the day congress would officially confirm the electoral results making Joe Biden the next President of the United States. Trump promoted the rally, dubbed StopTheSteal, in public and on Twitter stating “massive amounts” of evidence will be presented to prove the election was stolen. In true dictatorial fashion however, no evidence was then, or ever been presented. 

On January 6, 2021 Trump addressed a crowd that he had been priming for months to believe the election was stolen. Like a mob boss, he encouraged them to march on the capitol and fight, carefully crafting his words to be sure he himself would never be implicated in what was likely to be treason. But everyone in the crowd, and indeed the watching world knew what he meant. 

Trump insinuated that he would march with them, an act a true revolutionary would have done but instead, being a coward he went back to the safety of the White House to watch the scene unfold on FoxNews. Insulated from prosecution while his foolish supporters get hunted down and arrested by the FBI. 

While the Capitol was under attack Steny Hoyer, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer were communicating from a bunker with Maryland Governor Larry Hogan begging for the deployment of his troops that he said was ready, willing and able to go with one exception; they needed permission from the Pentagon. The Pentagon was being held back by the White House. For nearly two hours Trump sat on the Maryland National Guard, presumably waiting to see if his mob could occupy the Capitol, presumably not concerned that Pelosi and Pence could end up swinging from a rope. 

And now, 6 months later the North Carolina Republican Party convention allowed Trump to give a speech where he continued his dangerous false narrative that he’s the rightful president, and Republicans in congress are blocking an investigation into the attack on the Capitol. 

Donald J. Trump is a traitor to the United States and frankly so is anyone who still supports him, after all this everyone should know better. Yet he currently has the support of the GOP. 


The Republican Party is now the Party of treason.

Voter ID is a useless red herring. Here’s why.

/ KMac / Leave a comment
    Here’s the thing with voter ID, it does virtually nothing. VID is a slight-of-hand trick, a distraction of political convenience. I’d like to see somebody, anybody prove voter ID would change the outcome of any election anywhere by preventing in-person fraud. It won’t. Here’s why:
Voter ID will address in-person voting directly at the polls in real time ONLY. That’s it. That’s all. No election in U.S. history has ever been decided or influenced by in-person voter fraud. There’s a reason for that, it doesn’t happen on any notable level. That’s right folks it doesn’t happen much.
     I’m not against voter ID as long as every American gets ID easily and for free. But I am indifferent to it because it’s a red herring. Voter ID won’t do shit. Nothing. Why? Because there’s nothing for it to do. It’s a solution without a problem. Voter ID at the polls will not address the real fraud because real electoral fraud is systemic.
I would like to see anybody prove me wrong here.
     ID will not address disenfranchisement, gerrymandering, intimidation, ballot manipulation by a poll volunteer or election official, ballot destruction by an official, software tampering, mail-in fraud, etc. Only in-person fraud does ID address and while systemic electoral fraud continues on and on, I guarantee your average poll volunteer has a better chance of being struck by lightening than countering in-person voter fraud.
Once you wrap your mind around the fact that in-person voter fraud or voter impersonation is nearly non-existent, and ID prevents only that, then the question why the push for ID laws must be burning in your brain. Why?
Could it be that requiring photo ID would disenfranchise the poorest Americans by the hundreds of thousands? People in poverty face the problem of living miles away from an office that issues state ID’s, they often lack transportation, many offices in poor areas are open a couple days a week. Who do the poorest among us vote for traditionally? Who is the primary pusher of voter ID laws? It doesn’t take Detective Columbo to figure this out.
     Voter ID laws not only do nothing to prevent electoral fraud but are another example of systemic voter suppression.
Voter+ID+MGN

The Republican War on Voter Fraud

/ KMac / Leave a comment

The republicans in this country are quite the crusaders.  They seem to be crusading every time we turn around, and now that they appear to have the Tea Party under control they’ve turned their focus on the real problems that face America in this day and age.  Lowering taxes, keeping government off our backs, making sure those naughty gay people can’t desecrate our institution of marriage, protecting insurance companies from sick people etc.

Lately the crusade du jour is one to make sure people have to use a picture ID in order to vote.  The argument for this is to make sure you are who you say you are when you show up at the polls.  The bumper sticker argument is to stop voter fraud.  Sounds like a noble cause on the surface, if you’re not a citizen you can’t vote, you can’t vote more that once or in a district in which you don’t reside.

If anyone were to google voter fraud they would find dozens of examples of this illegal activity, there’s no doubt, it’s going on.   But when a solution to voter fraud comes up,  to use ID at the polls, it doesn’t take a political scientist to look into it and find that ID only combats one kind of voter fraud, and that’s voter impersonation. Voter impersonation is simply the act of showing up at the polls and pretending to be someone else.  All other forms of voter fraud are systematic in nature and would not be effected by showing an ID at the polls.  People who support voter ID laws fail to tell you this and usually use the blanket term “voter fraud” as if most or all types of voter fraud will be deterred by demanding ID at the polls.

And the real kicker, voter impersonation is virtually non-existent.  That’s right, it doesn’t exist.  Lets get this part straight, the one and only type of voter fraud that ID laws can deter doesn’t even exist on any mentionable level.  According to News 21, a study done in all 50 states turned up 2,068 cases of voter fraud overall since 2000 and only 10 cases came up with impersonation fraud. That’s 1 out of every 15 million voters.   It doesn’t exist.

Think about that the next time you read that some politician like a governor or a senator claim to have uncovered 172 cases of voter fraud in their state and a voter ID law is needed to curb it.  Ask yourself, was this 172 cases of impersonation fraud? Was there even one case of impersonation fraud in the batch?

Of course the republican establishment would have you think otherwise, during an interview on the Diane Rehm show Professor Richard Hasen he said while he was researching voter fraud for his new book, “Voter Wars”, he came across a report by Hans von Spakovsky for the Heritage Foundation that said a grand jury report from New York shows that impersonation voter fraud is a serious problem. When Hasen wrote Spakovsky to get the report, he got nothing.  Spakovski and the president of the Heritage Foundation didn’t want to talk about it.

Here’s Richard Hasen in his own words on the DR Show

HASEN

Now put aside the fact that 1984 is not that recent and the report covered 1968 to 1982.  I wrote to von Spakovsky who had written to me before to put things on my blog, I’d like to see the report.  Silence, didn’t hear from him.  Put it up on my blog, I’d like to see the report.  Does anyone have the report?  Silence.  I wrote to the president of the Heritage Foundation and said I’d like to see the report.  Silence.  No one would give me the report.  It’s a principle of scholarship that you share your data so people can verify it.

Eventually, the UC Irvine Law librarians were able to track down someone at the district attorney’s office in Brooklyn who found a copy of the report.  I posted it on my blog.  It’s now available to the public.  What did it show?  No impersonation voter fraud, collusion by election officials.

Once you understand that ID doesn’t stop absentee ballot fraud, ballot tampering by election officials, intimidation or any other kind of voter fraud, you then must stop for a second and wonder why the republican party is spending so much time, money and hot air even going so far as to lie to the public in order to enact voter ID laws.  They’re in an absolute frenzy over this.

You know exactly why.  The people who these laws disenfranchise are predominately democrats.  The goal of course is to suppress the vote.  Election fraud goes each way with both democrats and republicans engaging, but voter suppression seems to have an ugly conservative  history with such tactics as poll taxes, land ownership requirements and literacy tests aimed at African Americans as well as working class and poor white voters.

Only 30 to 50% of eligible voters actually get out to do so, depending on the election.   Some of us in this country find that statistic to be a disgrace,  while others it appears find that kind of turnout to be too much.