[EL] Accepting the results of the election

[Larry Levine]

As you rail against “Democrats and liberals” in this latest Trump dust up, you may want to consider this. http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/beyond-the-pale-gop-slams-trump-for-race-outcome-remark/ar-AAjbzvT?li=BBnb7Kz  Doesn’t labeling those who hold contrary opinions serve to diminish the weight of the facts you seek to present?

Larry

 

From: JBoppjr at aol.com [mailto:JBoppjr at aol.com] 
Sent: Thursday, October 20, 2016 7:59 AM
To: kogan.18 at osu.edu; weichpm at earthlink.net; SVladeck at law.utexas.edu; larrylevine at earthlink.net; rhasen at law.uci.edu; law-election at uci.edu
Subject: Re: [EL] Accepting the results of the election

 

Regarding your questions of me:

 

(1) First, as I have pointed out, liberals and Democrats have refused to accept the results of the 2000 election and no liberal or Democrat, or anyone one in the media that I know of, have been "horrified" or considered that a dire threat to Democracy.  You say that that refusal is justified and I understand that that is the position of the left.  But it would have been absurd to expect that Gore must accept the results of the election, without doing a recount in Florida, just as it is absurd to expect Trump to agree to do this either.  Yes I do think there is a gross double standard at play here.

 

By the way, here are a few more elections where Democrats refuse to accept the results of.

 

Click here: 8 Times Liberals Claimed An Election Was Stolen Or Rigged <http://thefederalist.com/2016/10/19/8-times-liberals-claimed-election-stolen-rigged/>  

 

(2) Yes, I agree with your point that voter fraud can be committed without registration fraud.  But one way to commit voter fraud is to commit registration fraud first.  What you do is register a fictitious person and then vote them either at the polls or by absentee ballot.  A voter ID requirement can stand in the way of voting the fraudulent registration by someone showing up at the polling place but this does not prevent voting by absentee. So in this instance, the fraudulent registration is the precursor to the voter fraud.  

 

And whether there is evidence of recent rigging or stealing of elections, you could start with all the Democrats and liberals who claim there is, in the link above. 

 

For my part, it is uncontestable that there has been vote fraud in our country that has effected the outcome of elections, including possibly the Presidency (see Nixon loss in 1960 as a result of vote fraud in Illinois).  I have done a number of recounts where there was vote fraud that effected the election and the people involved were prosecuted. I do think that our election laws have significantly reduced the incidents of this but the concerted attack on these fraud prevention laws raises the specter the historic voter fraud will raise its ugly head again.  So, unlike the Democrats, I want to continue with these fraud prevention measures.

 

Obviously, you and others have set the bar much higher by demanding evidence right now of voter fraud that is actually occurring today.  Well, little voting is occurring yet and, if voter fraud occurs, it can effect an election and there is no going back.  So I support reasonable fraud prevention measures to prevent that from happening. I believe that advanced registration and voter ID requirements, among others, are in that category. Jim Bopp

 

In a message dated 10/20/2016 9:33:15 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, kogan.18 at osu.edu <mailto:kogan.18 at osu.edu>  writes:

Jim,

 

As others have already pointed out, it seems strange to draw some sort of comparison between Democratic complaints about the 2000 election and Trump’s claims that the election is “rigged” via voter fraud. If your standard for judging the fairness of election outcome is whether the winner of the vote count is the person most voters intended to support, than there is clear evidence <http://www.academia.edu/download/44616369/butterfly.pdf>  that Gore should have actually won and lost only because the poor ballot design in Palm Beach County. By contrast, there has no evidence <http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/elj.2013.0231>  that there is voter fraud on a scale anywhere approaching what would be needed to have altered the outcome of any (recent) presidential election. To claim that one set of concerns (backed up by empirical evidence) and the other (backed up by conspiracy theories and innuendo) are somehow comparable seems pretty disingenuous.

 

I can’t speak for others, but what I found equally problematic is your claim that “thousands of instances of voter registration fraud in 56 of our 92 counties that is obviously a precursor to massive voter fraud” (emphasis added). If by obviously a precursor, you meant that logically registration fraud must chronologically precede voter fraud (which you later implied was what you meant), that is simply inaccurate. There could be voter fraud without registration fraud (e.g., an employee at a nursing home takes the absentee ballots of the legally registered seniors citizens who live there and fills them out without their permission). If you meant that massive voter fraud always happens when there registration fraud as an empirical matter, which was how I originally interpreted your statement, than that is also not true, for the reasons that Rick laid out earlier.

 

Vlad Kogan

 

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