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

[Even, Jeff (ATG)]

Ah, a new discussion thread that can take wing.  

 

Sorry.  Puns are one of my vices.

 

From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu [mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] On Behalf Of Lorraine Minnite
Sent: Monday, August 01, 2011 7:37 AM
To: law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
Subject: Re: [EL] in-person voter fraud Washington 2004 follow up

 

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


 
_____________________________________________________________
U.S. Treasury Circular 230 Notice

Any U.S. federal tax advice included in this communication (including
any attachments) was not intended or written to be used, and cannot be
used, for the purpose of (i) avoiding U.S. federal tax-related penalties
or (ii) promoting, marketing or recommending to another party any
tax-related matter addressed herein.
_____________________________________________________________
Confidentiality

The information contained in this communication may be confidential, is 
intended only for the use of the recipient named above, and may be legally 
privileged. It is not intended as legal advice, and may not be relied upon 
or used as legal advice. Nor does this communication establish an attorney 
client relationship between us. If the reader of this message is not the 
intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, 
distribution, or copying of this communication, or any of its contents, is 
strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, 
please re-send this communication to the sender and delete the original 
message and any copy of it from your computer system. Thank you.
______________________________________________________________  

 

 

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://webshare.law.ucla.edu/Listservs/law-election/attachments/20110801/7855b3cd/attachment.html>