Tag Archives: Voter fraud

national news, State news

Voter fraud: reddest of herrings

I am likely to begin screaming at the top of my lungs.

What will cause me such apoplexy? It will occur the next time I hear Donald John “Smartest Man in History in Chief” Trump declare that mail-in voting is an inherently corrupt method of exercising our rights as citizenship.

The second-most probable cause for my scream would be to hear it from his Republican cultists who like to echo the idiocy that pours forth from the nation’s No. 1 liar.

Texas might allow voters to cast their ballots by mail for the July runoff elections that were delayed by the coronavirus pandemic. Indeed, it is that very health crisis that gives all-mail voting the legs it normally wouldn’t necessarily have.

I need to remind everyone who fears a non-existent threat of “rampant voter fraud” of this fundamental truth.

It is this: We already have voter fraud in this country. It’s been a small problem in certain pockets of the country for, oh, about as long as we have had a United States of America. Every now and then, we hear about cadavers casting ballots; does Duval County, Texas, ring a bell for anyone?

Do we have widespread, rampant voter fraud now? No. We do not!

Does mail-in voting necessarily produce voter fraud? No. It does not!

How does one define “widespread” voter fraud? Well, I suggest it involves a level of fraudulent voting that far exceeds the hit-miss instances we hear about on occasion.

In 2016, roughly 135 million Americans voted for president of the United States. The vast bulk of those votes went either to Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. Virtually every ballot cast in 2016 was done according to the rules set by every state in the nation.

However, you will recall that Trump came forth with an accusation that since has been debunked and dismissed, that about 5 million “illegal aliens” voted for Clinton, giving her the 3-million vote plurality she won; Trump was elected, though, because he won enough Electoral College votes to win the presidency.

My point is that Trump’s yammering about mail-in voting “corruption” is merely a continuation of his ongoing bitching about the voting process.

Voter fraud is a canard, a phony-baloney excuse to disguise Trump’s real intent, which is to deny Americans the ability to vote. Mail-in voting boosts turnout tremendously and empowers Americans who otherwise might be inclined to sit on their hands.

With the nation still reeling from a pandemic, we need to search for ways to keep our democratic process alive and well.

political news

Memo to Trumpkins: Voting by mail is secure … period!

I have a number of Trumpkins among my many social media contacts. Some of them are actual friends of mine; others are members of my family; the rest are just, well, folks who take some measure of joy out of blasting my anti-Donald Trump thoughts on this blog.

Let’s try this one: Mail-in voting does not invite voter fraud. It is not corrupt, as Donald Trump his own self has alleged. It works in the states that allow it.

We ought to be able to vote by mail for president of the United States in November.

You know already that voting by mail is not my preferred method. I would rather troop to the polling place, stand in line and then cast my ballot on Election Day.

Circumstances, though, have overtaken that process. We have this thing called the coronavirus pandemic that’s infecting thousands of Americans daily. It has killed more of us than those who died during the Vietnam War and that number of fatalities continues to climb.

So what is the alternative to traditional voting for president this fall? Mail-in balloting works for me. It ought to work for all Americans who are interested in having their voices heard.

Have I mentioned that I want Joe Biden to defeat Donald Trump in that election? I guess I just did.

My concern about the upcoming presidential election is steeped more in the preservation of our fundamental right as citizens. We should be always encourage more citizens to vote, not seek to suppress that participation, which could be one result of declining to allow mail-in balloting and exposing Americans to the threat of a deadly viral infection by requiring them to cast their Election Day votes in polling places.

Texas isn’t exactly clamoring for the chance to vote by mail. We remain behind the electoral reform curve on that issue, just as we have been lagging in testing equipment available to detect the COVID-19 infection among Texans. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, furthermore, said he plans to appeal a judicial ruling handed down recently that paves the way for mail-in voting in Texas.

Trump wants to tamp down voter turnout. He denigrates mail-in balloting by saying it is “corrupt.” He offers no proof. He just makes reckless, ridiculous accusations. Meanwhile, secretaries of states that work in states that do allow mail-in voting tell us that they secure those ballots; they require voters to prove their eligibility; they report the tiniest of fractions of voter fraud. In effect, they tell us that there is no evidence of the voter corruption that Trump and others say exists.

If we want good government, then we need to have more — not fewer — citizens participating in the fundamental right of citizenship. If mail-in voting is the cure for what ails us while we battle a killer infection … then bring it!

national news

Give it a rest, Mr. POTUS … you won the ’16 election!

Donald Trump is not the first president to win the office by virtue of the Electoral College while losing what’s called the “popular vote.”

He is the first president, though, to keep yapping, yammering and blathering about the popular vote “loss.” He won’t give it a rest.

Uh, Mr. President? You won the damn election in 2016. The U.S. Constitution allows candidates to score enough Electoral College votes to win the election even if they fail to garner enough of the people’s actual votes to make it a clean sweep.

He won’t let go of the idiocy he keeps repeating that “illegal immigrants” cast votes for Hillary Clinton.

Good grief, dude. President Bush lost the popular vote in 2000 to then-Vice President Al Gore. It boiled down to counting those ballots in Florida. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled eventually that the ballot counting needed to stop. When it did end, Bush had 537 more votes than Gore had in Florida. He won the state’s electoral votes and, thus, Bush was elected president. It was done according to what the Constitution allows.

Did the 43rd president bitch and moan about losing the popular vote nationally to Al Gore? No! He took office and went to work immediately.

It’s too late for Trump to get to work now that he’s more than halfway through his term. He will keep griping about the alleged voter fraud. He won’t offer any evidence, or provide a shred of proof. He’ll just keep bloviating about it.

Donald Trump only validates the belief of many of us that political career is as fraudulent as his business career.

national news

FEC chair lays it on the line

Donald Trump keeps making specious allegations about voter fraud.

The head of the Federal Elections Commission, Ellen Weintraub, has heard enough from the president of the United States. She wants him to either put up or shut the hell up about allegations of fraud in our nation’s elections.

She wrote the president a letter that includes this: “What I wrote to you in March 2017 is just as true now: Our democracy depends on the American people’s faith in our elections. Your voter-fraud allegations run the risk of undermining that faith,” Weintraub wrote. “Just as seriously, baseless allegations of fraud have been used to rationalize indefensible laws that deter certain U.S. citizens from exercising their right to vote. Words matter, and facts matter.”

Trump alleges vote fraud in N.H.

She wants Trump to produce any evidence of what he has alleged.

Don’t hold your breath, Mme. FEC Chair. It ain’t gonna happen. Nor will the president ever acknowledge that he stepped in it bigly. 

If only he would. If only he could curb his crass instincts. If only the president of the United States, our commander in chief/head of state/leader of the free world would appreciate the dignity that goes with holding the office he now occupies.

None of that will happen, either.

Which is why — among a multitude of other reasons — he needs to be defeated for re-election.

national news

Innuendo hurler in chief is at it again

1 Comment

Donald J. Trump has hurled another innuendo at local election officials, alleging voter fraud without offering a scintilla of evidence to buttress his latest specious complaint.

He said he lost New Hampshire in the 2016 presidential election to Democratic nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton because of “voter fraud” in the Granite State.

Does he have any proof? Is there any evidence to support the president? Of course not! It’s not how Donald Trump rolls.

He lost the popular vote nationally to Clinton by nearly 3 million ballots. Trump said the margin came from millions of illegal votes cast by undocumented immigrants in California. Did he ever produce any evidence of that? Nope. None, man! Zilch.

He formed a phony commission to root out voter fraud headed by Vice President Mike Pence and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, but then disbanded the commission suddenly. Hmm. Why do you suppose he did that? My guess is that there was nothing to back up the ridiculous notion that Trump has posited.

So now he’s going after New Hampshire officials. He alleges voter fraud. There likely isn’t any.

The Innuendo Hurler in Chief is disgracing his office yet again.

State news

Search for voter fraud comes up . . . empty!

1 Comment

I guess it’s fair to ask: Did the search for fraudulent voters in Texas come up empty?

The Texas secretary of state’s office flagged the names of 95,000 individuals looking for evidence that they aren’t U.S. citizens and were ineligible to vote. Then the office decided that many thousands of those flagged actually are U.S. citizens.

Gov. Greg Abbott is downplaying the significance of what transpired. He said something about it being an ongoing process and that the list was never intended to be a “final” assessment.

Well, OK, governor. If that’s your story, I’m sure you’re going to stand by it.

It just looks to me as though the secretary of state was looking for a problem where none seems to exist. The SoS informed officials in five large Texas counties — including Collin County, where my wife and I reside — that they likely erred in flagging those names.

It looks to me as though we are finding out that the instances of fraudulent voting in Texas is the non-starter that many critics of the allegations about voter fraud have said all along.

There just isn’t the epidemic of voter fraud in Texas that many have suggested is occurring.

political news

Voter ‘crisis’ fizzles out quietly

Texas election officials sent out an alarming message that 95,000 voters’ names were flagged because they supposedly weren’t U.S. citizens.

Oh, but then came the big “oops!”

Those officials notified authorities in five large counties that many of those flagged for supposed voting ineligibility were actually citizens after all.

The secretary of state’s office notified officials in Harris, Travis, Fort Bend, Collin and Williamson counties that the individuals thought to be worth checking shouldn’t be on the list.

The way I view it, we have seen what happens when we presume to have a problem where none may exist.

Where is the crisis?

In Harris County, more than 29,000 residents’ names were flagged but then a “substantial number of them” were determined to be citizens. “We’re going to proceed very carefully,” said Douglas Ray, a special assistant Harris County attorney.

What we might have here is a rush to judgment in this era of voter-fraud alarm bells. Donald Trump has made it one of his several key wedge issues as he seeks to cement his “base” support. Now we hear from Texas officials that they are on the hunt for supposedly ineligible voters, only to learn that they are, um — wrong!

Be careful when attaching “flags” to voters’ names.

national news

Vote recount = election theft? Hardly!

1 Comment

Donald J. Trump is so adept at tossing out unfounded and unsubstantiated allegations it’s getting difficult to zero in on matters deserving of comment.

But here’s one that does. The president has tweeted an allegation of electoral theft in Florida — without any evidence, quite naturally — because officials there have ordered a recount of ballots in the races for U.S. senator and for governor.

Democrats and Republicans are locked in vise-tight battles for both offices. Trump now has warned of possible theft of the election moments after the recounts were declared.

Hey, he’s a pro at this kind of fear-mongering. Remember how he contended that “millions of illegal aliens” voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, accounting for her nearly 3 million vote lead in the popular vote?

America is still waiting for proof of that allegation, Mr. President.

He once warned of a “rigged election” were he to lose the 2016 presidential contest. Hah! He won that election, but hasn’t said a disparaging word about the allegation over whether Russian interference might have “rigged” the results in his favor.

How about letting the recount proceed, Mr. President. We don’t need to hear another word from you on whether there’s any “theft” involved. If the Republicans end up winning the Senate seat and the governorship, at least they will have ensured that all the ballots are counted. The same thing will hold true as well even if the Democrats emerge victorious.

That’s how the system works.

national news, political news

Voter fraud commission is a goner … good!

Donald J. Trump said this today in a statement released by the White House:

“Despite substantial evidence of voter fraud, many states have refused to provide the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity with basic information relevant to its inquiry.

“Rather than engage in endless legal battles at taxpayer expense, today I signed an executive order to dissolve the Commission, and have asked the Department of Homeland Security to review these issues and determine next courses of action.”

Where do I begin? I’ll start with this: Mr. President, the only “evidence” produced came from your mouth or, more accurately, your Twitter account.

The president said after the 2016 election that “millions of illegal immigrants” voted for Hillary Clinton, giving her the nearly 3 million popular vote margin she rolled up while losing the Electoral College tally. Trump never produced a scintilla of evidence. No one ever proved a thing about alleged widespread voter fraud.

So he convened this voter fraud panel to prove he was right. It didn’t find a thing. The president is right about one thing: States refused to cooperate because elections officials — including those in Texas — couldn’t determine any rational cause for releasing the information.

This looked for all the world like an effort to find a solution in search of a problem. The problem didn’t exist in the manner that the president alleged.

I’ll make a friendly wager. No money involved: The Department of Homeland Security won’t find anything, either.

national news, political news, State news

Texas playing ball with vote fraud panel … sort of

I was hoping the Texas secretary of state would follow the lead of his fellow Republican colleague in Mississippi and tell the feds to go “jump in the Gulf of Mexico.”

He didn’t. Instead, the state is going to hand over some voter records to that idiotic voter fraud commission named by Donald J. Trump to root out the hordes of illegal votes — he says — that were cast in the 2016 presidential election.

Good luck with that.

The panel led by Vice President Mike Pence and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach is called the Election Integrity Commission. The president has asserted — with zero evidence at hand — that “millions of illegal immigrants” voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, giving her the popular vote margin over Trump.

So he cobbled together this group to find a problem in search of a solution.

The Texas secretary of state is the state’s top elections officer. According to the Texas Tribune: “Texas Secretary of State Rolando Pablos said he plans to respond to the request, but it’s not entirely clear how much data he’ll be handing over. Pablos said his agency would treat Kobach’s letter like any other public information request, and would only hand over information that’s considered public under Texas law.

“’The Secretary of State’s office will provide the Election Integrity Commission with public information and will protect the private information of Texas citizens while working to maintain the security and integrity of our state’s elections system,’ Pablos said in a statement. ‘As always, my office will continue to exercise the utmost care whenever sensitive voter information is required to be released by state or federal law.’”

Social Security numbers are private and as I understand it, that’s about the extentof the information Pablos’s office will withhold from this commission.

Check out the Texas Tribune explanation here.

The voter fraud panel’s request has been met with considerable resistance around the country. Officials in states that voted for Trump have said “no” to requests, as have those in states that voted for Clinton.

Honestly, this semi-acquiescence from Rolando Pablos makes me a bit nervous … and I’m a U.S. citizen.

I also wonder about something. Why is the president so damn intent on looking for widespread voter fraud that few local officials believe exist while he continues to ignore the assertion by U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia meddled in our electoral process?