"So, Mr. Bopp, when you get some evidence of actual VOTER fraud, your
sarcasm will be warranted."
Yes, in my own law practice as a small town country lawyer. I handled
a recount for mayor of Brazil IN and dozens of people from outside the city
voted in the city election. We gave our evidence to the county prosecutor
(a Democrat), he prosecuted and he obtained convictions for illegally voting in
the election.
Thanks for the permission.
Jim Bopp
In a message dated 9/25/2010 1:57:06 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
jasonrylander@gmail.com writes:
Voter
registration fraud and voter fraud are two different things. One doesn't
necessarily lead to the other. If those 24,000 phantom voters had shown
up at their precinct en masse, you'd think people would have noticed.
A similar thing happened here in Arlington, VA this year. A
strange coalition of public safety unions, the GOP, and the Green Party
attempted to get a change-of-government referendum on the ballot to oust the
Democratic county leadership. They hired out of state petition gatherers
in violation of Virginia law. Their roster included local convicted
felons who were themselves ineligible to solicit signatures.. Arlington
residents living in a homeless shelter attested to petitions that on their
face could not have been circulated by them on the days indicated.
Nearly a third of signatures gathered ended being tossed once the voter
registrar became aware of these abnormalities. The registrar notified
the police and Commonwealth's attorney, but alas no arrests have been
made. That's unfortunate. Of course in the Arlington case, most
(but not all) of the actual signatures were legit, it was the mode of
solicitation that broke the law. Still.
The fact is when groups
pay people to collect signatures, be it for referenda or for registration,
some people will commit fraud (and the problem may not just be limited to paid
circulators). Registrars should really catch examples as egregious as
the one in this article. Eternal vigilance is indeed the price of
liberty.
But the interesting thing is there is not one sentence in this
article suggesting that any person voted multiple times, or voted despite
being ineligible, or that the outcome of any election was ever in doubt as a
result.
It's a nice slight of hand that the GOP attempts every
election season to cast doubt on the validity of America's elections, but
registration irregularities do not necessarily lead to fraudulent votes being
cast. Are such incidents problematic? Sure. Can we conclude
from this that organized efforts are underway to steal elections? Not
remotely (and in fact it would be a rather difficult conspiracy to carry out
in practice).
So, Mr. Bopp, when you get some evidence of actual VOTER
fraud, your sarcasm will be warranted. Until then ...
Regards,
Jason Rylander*
*licensed in DC and Virginia
On Sat, Sep 25, 2010 at 1:14 PM,
<JBoppjr@aol.com> wrote:
Don't bother reading this article, because we have been assured that
there is no such thing as voter fraud. It is a figment of the
GOP's imagination. No, it is really an effort at voter suppression. In
any event, it is Bush's fault (it is Houston after all). Jim
Bopp
_______________________________________________
election-law
mailing list
election-law@mailman.lls.edu
http://mailman.lls.edu/mailman/listinfo/election-law