Tag Archives: Duval County

political news, State news

Voter ID: a solution in search of a problem

vote fraud

Let’s talk for a moment about voter fraud.

If there’s an overblown, overhyped and overstated problem with the American electoral system, it has to be voter fraud.

Even in Texas, ,which has become somewhat legendary because of one instance of voter fraud. It occurred in 1948 when Duval County in South Texas supposedly recorded more votes than registered voters. The inflated number of votes allegedly pushed a young political candidate, Democrat Lyndon Johnson, over the top in his party primary runoff contest for the U.S. Senate.

How many instances of ballot-box chicanery have occurred in Texas since then? Damn few.

Republicans, though, have seized on voter fraud as a compelling national political problem. They keep insisting that Americans must prove they are eligible to vote by showing photo ID documents when they go to the polls.

http://www.texasmonthly.com/burka-blog/the-integrity-of-our-elections/

I don’t necessarily object personally to showing photo ID when I go vote. I am able to present a valid driver’s license. A lot of Americans, though, do not drive; they don’t own passports; they don’t have licenses to carry concealed weapons. They’re out of luck.

Some courts have ruled that voter ID laws, therefore, to be inherently unconstitutional.

The most objectionable element of this discussion, though, has been the canard put forward that the electoral system is corrupt. Fear mongers — now led by Republican presidential nominee Donald J. Trump — keep insisting that illegal immigrants are voting by the thousands to elect Democrats to public office.

As Erica Grieder writes in her blog for Texas Monthly: “It’s true that voter fraud is real. It’s even true that there have been recorded instances of people passing themselves off as someone else in order to cast a fraudulent vote, which is the specific form of fraud that laws requiring photo ID might prevent. But that crime is not even remotely common, nor do Americans have any real cause to worry about elections being stolen in the most labor-intensive way imaginable.”

Trump is now predicting that the presidential election will be “rigged.” How does he know this to be true? He just says it.

Those who are following his futile efforts to change the subject away from his abject ignorance about anything relating to government and public policy, are buying into it.

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Texas voter fraud: Is it a major problem?

Dan Branch wants to become Texas’s next attorney general and, by golly, the Republican state representative from Dallas says he’s going to get really tough on voter fraud.

I must ask, therefore: Is voter fraud a major problem in Texas? I am thinking it’s about as major an issue here as it is virtually everywhere else. Which means it isn’t that big a deal.

http://blog.mysanantonio.com/texas-politics/2013/10/branch-vows-to-attack-voter-fraud-in-texas/

Branch vows to monitor groups that seek to “subvert” voter integrity; he would appoint a special counsel who would prosecute those accused of voter fraud; and he vows to defend the Texas voter ID law against “spurious” attempts by the Obama administration to overturn it.

I’m still a bit dubious about the need for a voter ID law in Texas, particularly since those who sing its praises contend that voter fraud has reached epidemic proportions here. I’m still awaiting evidence that voter fraud is rampant.

Roughly 8 million Texans voted in the 2012 presidential election. Has anyone produced evidence that voter fraud has become a major concern anywhere in the state? I haven’t heard of it.

Yes, the state’s political history is full of stories of dead people voting. Duval County in South Texas provides the best-known example of corpses rising from their graves to vote for Lyndon Johnson. That was a very long time ago.

The state’s population has exploded in the decades since that era. The number of people voting in elections has boomed. Have we seen an accompanying explosion in cases of vote fraud? No.

Obviously, I do not condone voter fraud. Yes, the state needs to be vigilant to protect the integrity of the electoral process. I sense, however, that candidates for public office, as the San Antonio Express-News blog linked to this post notes, may be “creating a solution in search of a problem.”