Wednesday, August 24, 2005

Voter fraud is also a threat to minority voters

John Fund wrote in OpinionJournal .... Other speakers claimed Georgia's new photo ID law would suppress poor and elderly minority voters who might lack such a document.... Andrew Young, the former Atlanta mayor and U.N. ambassador who spoke at the rally, believes that in an era when people have to show ID to rent a video or cash a check "requiring ID can help poor people." He noted that Georgia is deploying a mobile bus to issue voter IDs and allowing groups like the NAACP to arrange for it to go to specific sites.

It is not that requiring a voter to have an ID is that much of a problem, but it does make it more difficult for him to vote multiple times, pretending to be dead people, etc. I.E. it does go a long way to preventing voter fraud, which is what many Dems depend on to get elected.
Nor has the truth stretching stopped with the election. Barbara Arnwine of The Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights claims photo ID laws "could disenfranchise 10% of the electorate." In June, DNC Chairman Howard Dean issued a report on last year's election in Ohio. He claimed it backed up charges of widespread "voter suppression." But after a scholar involved in writing the report told journalists that wasn't so, Mr. Dean had to return to the microphones to revise his remarks: "While we certainly couldn't draw a proven conclusion that this was willful, it certainly has the appearance of impropriety."

But William Anthony, Democratic chairman in Ohio's capital of Columbus, scoffs at such suggestions. Mr. Anthony, who is also chair of the county elections board, said the high turnout and a ballot that involved more than 100 choices for some voters did create lines, but told the Columbus Dispatch he was offended by "a band of conspiracy theorists" alleging suppression. "I am a black man. Why would I sit there and disenfranchise voters in my own community?"

This isn't to say dirty tricks aren't pulled to lower minority turnout. Mr. Dean has pointed to anonymous flyers that publicized Election Day as being on a Wednesday or informed voters they had to clear up parking tickets to vote. But the only documented case of serious deception involving more than fliers was committed by the Kerry campaign. On Election Day, a Marion, Ohio, judge enjoined Democrats from calling GOP voters and giving them incorrect polling locations while claiming they had to bring four separate forms of ID to vote.

Cathy Chaffin, the county Democratic chair, has signed an affidavit on the incident that reads like a plea from a hostage. In late October, she learned that Kerry workers who had taken over her office space were making the calls and ordered them to stop. Days later she learned the calls were still being made and repeated her command. On the morning of Election Day she learned "the activity had not in fact stopped" and told Kerry staffer Jim Secreto "he could not operate out of the headquarters if he continued to violate my directive."
And despite all of those efforts to steal the elections, the Dems still lost.

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