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Voter Fraud Tag

The California Motor Voter program was promoted as a way to make registering to vote at the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) more convenient. Eligible applicants would completing a driver license, identification (ID) card or change of address transaction with the DMV, and then would be automatically registered to vote by the California Secretary of State (unless they choose to opt out), The new rule is as successful as I anticipated. The only law that really works in California is the one involving unintended consequences.

Friday, the Fifth Circuit gave the hotly contested Texas voter ID law the go-ahead. After several rewrites, the latest version of the law passed legal muster.

A California law, which goes into effect on April 1, automatically registers people to vote when they apply for a new driver's license or new state identification card. The Golden State permits anyone who claims to be in the country legally, even without proof, to obtain a license. So, logically, I anticipate that California could be getting a whole, new crop of illegal immigrant voters.

Elections officials in Philadelphia discovered that a glitch allowed hundreds of illegal voters to cast ballots in the last decade. From Philly.com:
Commissioner Al Schmidt blamed that on what he said was a PennDot glitch that enabled legal permanent residents to register to vote at kiosks when they applied or renewed for driver’s licenses or registrations.

A federal judge has once again struck down the Texas voter ID law, stating that the changes the lawmakers made over the summer did not eliminate the discriminatory language. From The Hill:
U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos ruled that the law was enacted with the deliberate intent to discriminate against black and Hispanic voters. Ramos said that it violates the Voting Rights Act and the 14th and 15th Amendments of the Constitution.

A federal judge has again rejected the 2011 Texas voter ID law, stating that the legislators meant to discriminate against minority voters. U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos made this same ruling in 2014, which forced an appeal. The Fifth Circuit issued a stay against the order. The Supreme Court stepped in and allowed Texas to use the voter ID law. But last July the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans asked the judge "to re-examine the decision" since the judges found that "some of the evidence used by the judge wasn't relevant." The two sides reached a deal for the 2016 election, which allowed a voter to "sign a declaration swearing that he or she has had a reasonable difficulty that prevented obtaining one of the accepted forms of photo identification."

So the Michigan vote recount revealed corruption and fraud..just not what Jill Stein and Hillary Clinton hoped for. Instead, the recount showed that too many people voted in the Detroit precincts, areas that Hillary won by a large majority. The Detroit News reported:
Voting machines in more than one-third of all Detroit precincts registered more votes than they should have during last month’s presidential election, according to Wayne County records prepared at the request of The Detroit News. Detailed reports from the office of Wayne County Clerk Cathy Garrett show optical scanners at 248 of the city’s 662 precincts, or 37 percent, tabulated more ballots than the number of voters tallied by workers in the poll books. Voting irregularities in Detroit have spurred plans for an audit by Michigan Secretary of State Ruth Johnson’s office, Elections Director Chris Thomas said Monday.

No one has called the North Carolina governor's race between incumbent Governor Pat McCrory (R) and his challenger Roy Cooper (D) since only 5,000 votes separate the two. To make matters worse, there are now allegations of voter fraud on absentee ballots:
A protest has been filed in Bladen County alleging that a handful of people may have improperly submitted hundreds of absentee ballots, while also getting paid for get-out-the-vote efforts by a community group funded by the N.C. Democratic Party. According to the protest filed by McCrae Dowless, who won election as soil and water district supervisor, the handwriting on a number of ballots and the signatures of some mail-in absentee witnesses were similar. He said the questioned ballots seem to have been cast in favor of a straight ticket of candidates and also to vote for a man named Franklin Graham, who ran a write-in campaign for soil and water district supervisor.

Aleister blogged about James O'Keefe's video exposing a Chicago activist, who visited the White House 45 times since President Obama took office, and his description of how voters are bused into key precincts to influence results. Mary Chastain noted that Indiana officials are investigating possible voter fraud after people noticed their voter registration cards had incorrect information.

"Vote early, vote often" is one of Chicago's unofficial mottos. One of the most corrupt cities in America is famous for its voter fraud back in the day, but officials now insist that everything is on the down low and technology has helped wipe out voter fraud. Well, investigators at the local CBS station found that "119 dead people have voted a total of 229 times in Chicago in the last decade" after they merged the "Chicago Board of Election voter histories with the death master file from the Social Security Administration."

Indiana officials have started an investigation into possible voter fraud after people noticed their voter registration cards had incorrect information. Secretary of State Connie Lawson released this statement:
“We ran a report in the Statewide Voter Registration System and found thousands of dates of births and first names were changed. These records were changed on paper forms, at the BMV and online. At this time, my office is not sure why these records were changed, but we have evaluated the Statewide Voter Registration System and have found no indication it has been compromised. We believe this may be a case of voter fraud and have turned our findings over to the State Police, who are currently conducting an investigation into alleged voter fraud.”

State approaches to disenfranchising felons vary widely. For example, in Maine and Vermont, felons never lose their right to vote, even while they are incarcerated. California automatically restores voting rights once the sentence has been completed. However, Governor Jerry Brown has taken felon voting rights for some inmates to a whole, new level.
Gov. Jerry Brown has agreed to restore the voting rights of convicted felons serving time in county jails. The bill that Brown announced signing Wednesday also reinstates the voting eligibility of felons on probation or under community supervision beginning next year. It does not affect those in state or federal prisons. AB2466 stems from California’s criminal justice realignment, which led to some people convicted of low-level felonies serving time in county jails.