{"id":3769,"date":"2013-10-18T15:12:22","date_gmt":"2013-10-18T15:12:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/highplainsblogger.wordpress.com\/?p=3769"},"modified":"2013-10-18T15:12:22","modified_gmt":"2013-10-18T15:12:22","slug":"texas-voter-fraud-is-it-a-major-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=3769","title":{"rendered":"Texas voter fraud: Is it a major problem?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p>Dan Branch wants to become Texas&#8217;s next attorney general and, by golly, the Republican state representative from Dallas says he&#8217;s going to get really tough on voter fraud.<\/p>\n<p>I must ask, therefore: Is voter fraud a major problem in Texas? I am thinking it&#8217;s about as major an issue here as it is virtually everywhere else. Which means it isn&#8217;t that big a deal.<\/p>\n<p>http:\/\/blog.mysanantonio.com\/texas-politics\/2013\/10\/branch-vows-to-attack-voter-fraud-in-texas\/<\/p>\n<p>Branch vows to monitor groups that seek to &#8220;subvert&#8221; 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 &#8220;spurious&#8221; attempts by the Obama administration to overturn it.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;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&#8217;m still awaiting evidence that voter fraud is rampant.<\/p>\n<p>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&#8217;t heard of it.<\/p>\n<p>Yes, the state&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p>The state&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p>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 &#8220;creating a solution in search of a problem.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dan Branch wants to become Texas&#8217;s next attorney general and, by golly, the Republican state representative from Dallas says he&#8217;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&#8217;s about as major an issue here as it is virtually everywhere &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=3769\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Texas voter fraud: Is it a major problem?<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1252,1485,5131,5133],"class_list":["post-3769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dan-branch","tag-duval-county","tag-voter-fraud","tag-voter-id-law"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3769"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3769\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}