[EL] in-person voter fraud Washington 2004 follow up

[Lorraine Minnite]

Thanks for that research on migratory bird violations.  Very enlightening!

But the rest of what Barnaby Zall writes here only adds to the confusion
about voter fraud.  He misrepresent the 1996 Dornan-Sanchez contested
congressional election, the investigations by the Congress into whether
fraud had been committed, and the difference between illegal and fraudulent
voting which was largely my point.

Sometimes when people don't get their way they say things like "the INS was
unwilling to assist in the investigation of fraud by noncitizens in the 1996
elections."  Why might they be unwilling?  In a letter to the chairman of
the Committee on House Oversight, dated May 1, 1997, the INS wrote:

"INS databases are not organized for this purpose [to prove citizenship
status] and there are inherent limitations on their use to match against
lists of registered voters.  For example, with only two common identifiers
name and date of birth there is a potential for false matches and duplicate
matches for a single registered voter.  Also the INS does not typically
update files of individuals after they are naturalized.  In addition,
automated databases do not necessarily contain records pertaining to
individuals who naturalized prior to 1973.  Therefore, records of long-time
naturalized citizens would not necessarily be easily retrievable from INS
databases.  Finally, the INS does not, of course, maintain records on
native-born United States citizens."

INS officials testified at a May 15, 1997, Congressional hearing before the
Committee that because their central database, the Central Index System or
CIS, was not uniformly updated, and that the only way to know for sure
whether a foreign born resident was a citizen was to manually check the
person's paper files for a naturalization certificate.   In fact, the INS
later told the Committee that there was more than a 50 percent error rate in
its computerized files, meaning more than half of the people missing a
naturalization date in the database likely were citizens.

In response to a Congressional Task Force's claim that it had uncovered
"documented evidence" that "624 persons registered when they were not
citizens," based on a flawed database match of flawed INS records and the
Orange County voter registration file (H. Rept. 105-416, 38), the Minority
report of the Committee on House Oversight states,

"To be charitable, this is a gross mischaracterization...In fact nothing
definitive can be concluded about most of these people with respect to their
citizenship status and right to vote, either because the INS has not been
able to locate a signature in its records that can be compared to the
signature provided by the Orange County Registrar, or because the INS has
not located in its various computer databases and paper files a
naturalization date for these individuals.  Without a legible signature from
both agencies, a signature comparison cannot be conducted to determine
whether the voter in Orange County is likely the same person as the one in
the INS file.  Without a naturalization date, it is impossible to determine
when or if the 'suspect voter' became a citizen" (H. Rept. 105-416, 60).

Moreover, on April 29, 1998, California's Secretary of State announced that
the people identified by the Task Force as illegal, noncitizen voters in the
46th Congressional district election of 1996 would not be prosecuted for
voter fraud because the Secretary decided that they had registered in error
and not from criminal intent (see: "California Won't Prosecute Noncitizen
Voters," Washington Post, March 1, 1998, A19).  Perhaps this is why the
grand jury "refused" to issue indictments.

Finally, I stand by my statement that “It is difficult to conceive of whole
categories of criminal behavior that go almost completely undetected or
ignored by law enforcement officials.”  When people violate rules they do
not know exist - is that criminal behavior?  When American citizens try to
register because they'd like to participate in our democracy, and a clerk
accepts an expired prison ID card and recent letter to the voter from a
parole board as evidence of the person's eligibility (when in fact, the
person is not eligible because he is still under state supervision for a
felony conviction) - is that criminal behavior?  When an elderly citizen
sends in the absentee ballot of their dearly departed spouse of 63 years,
who was alive when the ballot arrived in the mail -- is that criminal
behavior?

Fraud has meaning in the law and it involves intentional behavior to
knowingly violate the law.  Unless you can marshal at least a little
evidence to show that mistakes are never made in election administration, I
think it is only fair, reasonable and right that we don't resort to calling
every election irregularity or even illegality fraud.  Mistakes, which
surely happen with some frequency, should be ruled out first.

Lori Minnite

On Mon, Aug 1, 2011 at 9:48 AM, <BZall at aol.com> wrote:

> **
>  In a message dated 7/31/2011 11:45:56 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
> lminnite at gmail.com writes:
>
> There were more violations of the nation's migratory bird laws over the
> same period than there were cases of voter fraud. I don't know because I'm
> not an outdoors person and I don't know how wildlife investigators might go
> about doing their job, but I have to believe it's hard to find migratory
> bird law violators.
>
>
> Actually, it's not. You find them when you fill your gas tank.
>
> The Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, 16 U.S.C. §§ 703-712, is a strict
> liability statute. Birds die + conditions found = violation. Violators are
> subject to penalties of up to $15,000 per bird. Birds covered include
> swifts, martins and others not ordinarily thought of as migratory.
>
> Many prosecuted oil or chemical spills include MBTA claims. For a review of
> bird kill questions involving the Gulf Oil spill, but also lots of citations
> to MBTA prosecutions, see here:
> http://ncseonline.org/nle/crsreports/10Sep/R41308.pdf. Some violators,
> such as oil barge operator Bouchard Transportation Corp., which pled guilty
> to violating the MBTA in 2003, have paid fines in the millions of dollars;
> BTC paid $8 million. In *Exxon Valdez*, Exxon paid $150 million in
> wildlife-related claims.
>
> It's kind of like Lori Minnite's claim in the Project Vote brief in *
> Crawford* that “It is difficult to conceive of whole categories of
> criminal behavior that go almost completely undetected or ignored by law
> enforcement officials.” Lorraine C. Minnite, Ph.D., *The Politics of Voter
> Fraud*, Project Vote, at 11 (2007).
>
> Not all that hard to conceive, since information is available: “Another
> [U.S. Attorney] office reported that they declined to prosecute a number of
> investigations (number not tracked) that involved aliens who registered to
> vote. Rather than prosecute, they allowed administrative procedures
> regarding deportation to occur.”  GAO-05-478, at 60.
>   ****
>
>       Similarly, the House Committee on House Oversight reported in 1998
> that the Immigration and Naturalization Service was unwilling to assist in
> investigating fraud by non-citizens in the 1996 elections. H. Rpt. 105-416,
> at 88, and n. 79. In California, the House Oversight Committee reported,
> the Orange County District Attorney failed to obtain indictments, even
> though his  investigation demonstrated huge amounts of vote fraud,
> including that 61% of an advocacy group’s voter registrations were
> “illegal.” *Id*., at 337. The Secretary of State determined that 442
> non-citizens voted in the disputed 1996 election, but no prosecutions
> appeared. *Id*., at 338. A grand jury refused to issue indictments for the
> “several individuals who coordinated the Hermandad Mexicano Nacional voter
> registration effort. At least one witness who had worked for Hermandad fled
> to Mexico early in 1997, making the investigation more difficult.” *Id*.,
> at 337. All this even though the head of Hermandad Mexicano Nacional
> admitted registering non-citizens on McNeil-Lehrer (as it was then called).
>
> Barnaby Zall
> Of Counsel
> Weinberg, Jacobs & Tolani, LLP
> 11300 Rockville Pike, Suite 1200
> Rockville, MD 20852
> 301-231-6943 (direct dial)
> www.wjlaw.com <http://www.wj/>
> bzall at aol.com
>
>
>
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