Cases of Election Fraud

A public interest law firm has discovered thousands of noncitizens were quietly removed from Virginia voter rolls and that a number of the removed individuals had been voting since the 1980s.

The Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), an Indiana-based group that litigates to protect election integrity, released a report detailing their findings on Virginia's voter rolls. The group filed numerous lawsuits and submitted a number of record requests in order to gather the information after the state had initially stonewalled their efforts.

The extensive review of voter history files across Virginia's 133 jurisdictions found that state election officials removed 5,556 noncitizen voters between 2011 and May 2017. Of the 5,556 noncitizens that were quietly removed from the rolls, 1,852 cast ballots.

"Virginia's voter registration system is so flawed, noncitizens have been found voting since the 1980s and weren't caught until recently—by happenstance," Logan Churchwell, PILF's spokesman, told the Washington Free Beacon. "It's 2017—using the honor system to determine eligibility is only defended by those without a sense of outrage toward voter fraud."

Last year, PILF released a similar report that found 1,000 noncitizens that were removed from the state's voter rolls, 200 of whom had voted illegally. However, only eight Virginia locales originally complied with the group's records requests at the time.
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I’m trying to read more about this PILF story. In addition to Freebecaon, search for the PILF report turns up:

  • Washington Times
  • Daily Caller
  • Breitbart
  • Teaparty.org
  • Thegatewaypundit
…basically a who's who of red alarm bells when it comes to evaluating a story’s credibility. But it’s fascinating to see how stories like this get passed around.

Also among the results is coverage from MediaMatters: https://www.mediamatters.org/research/2017/06/07/right-wing-media-hype-flawed-report-illegal-voting-pushed-serial-conservative-misinformers/216819

Conservative media are reporting on a study claiming that thousands of illegal votes have been cast in Virginia since 1988. However, the study's authors have reportedly used “unreliable methodology” before, its findings go against those of several other studies and experts on voter fraud, and a person inaccurately targeted in it has called it a “gross misrepresentation of the facts.” Additionally, the study was put out by groups known for spreading conspiracy theories and fables about voter fraud and intimidation and which have previously used dubious methodologies in their studies.
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(Also, PILF, ha, ha -- not to distract from the more serious message here. I almost succeeded in refraining.)

 
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A James Madison University student is heading to prison after he pleaded guilty to registering dead voters for the Democratic Party during the 2016 election.

Andrew Spieles, 21, received a 100-day prison sentence in federal court on Tuesday for falsifying 18 Virginia Voter Registration Forms that were submitted to the registrar’s office in Harrisonburg last August, WSET reports.

“On August 15, 2016, an employee of the Registrar’s Office contacted law enforcement after another employee in the office recognized a registration form submitted in the name of the deceased father of a Rockingham County Judge,” according to the Department of Justice. “The Registrar’s Office discovered multiple instances of similarly falsified forms when it reviewed additional registrations. Some were in the names of deceased individuals while others bore incorrect middle names, birth dates, and social security numbers.”

Spieles was working for the Democratic campaign during the voter registration drive, and “admitted that he prepared the false voter registration forms by obtaining the name, age, and address of individuals from ‘walk sheets’ provided to him by the Virginia Democratic Party, fabricating a birth date based on the ages listed in the walk sheet, and fabricating the social security numbers,” the Justice Department wrote in a news release.
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Culmination of an investigation started in Sept 2016: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/he-fought-in-world-war-ii-he-died-in-2014-and-he-just-registered-to-vote-in-va/2016/09/29/5e0bffee-8670-11e6-ac72-a29979381495_story.html?utm_term=.ce25f2d9a382

Indeed (and granted, this predates 2016):


That’s the distressing but entirely predictable upshot of a blockbuster report published by the Indianapolis Star on Thursday. The Star found that between 2008 and 2016, Republican officials reduced the number of early voting stations in Marion County from three to one, resulting in a 26 percent decline in absentee voting in the 2016 presidential election. (Early votes are cast via absentee ballots.) Meanwhile, officials added two early voting stations to the neighboring Hamilton County, which is populated primarily by white Republicans. The county saw a 63 percent increase in absentee voting in 2016. There is now one early voting station for every 100,000 voters in Hamilton County and one for every 700,000 voters in Marion County. In total, the number of people who voted in Marion County decreased by 11,261 between 2008 and 2016 and increased in Hamilton County by 27,376—this “despite an increase of registered voters in both counties,” the Star reports. (...)

The unfortunate reality is that Republicans are suppressing minority voting rights with such speed and expertise that the occasional legal victory cannot reverse the broader trend. After the Supreme Court’s Republican appointees gutted the VRA in 2013, many jurisdictions newly freed from federal oversight promptly cut early voting and reduced the number of polling places in minority areas. It is extremely difficult to challenge these closures in the absence of a robust VRA.
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Now that's what we call a ground game.

 
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These stories might not seem like a lot in isolation, but it's a game of inches, and cumulatively, they add up to the gradual erosion of a fair and free voting system.

I hope those like Kander and Sanders and others fighting for voting rights can be successful. Right now it seems like they are fighting a losing war. If not, I suppose we will have to just learn to accept our Republican overlords until enough regular people get ticked off about the situation to devote their time and attention to fiixing it.

 
Sometimes I wonder if our elections have gotten to be 3rd world.    These last 4 posts verify it.   Shameful.   :facepalm: Then when you add gerrymandering on to it: :facepalm: :facepalm:

 
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The ONLY fraud happening is with republican candidates.  What Kemp is doing now is just sickening ... I still think she's got a pretty good chance of winning outright, and then won't he look stupid.

 
this seems to be getting truer every day.     it doesn't matter who you vote for....what really matters is who is counting the votes.

 
knapplc said:
The Republicans have been the most vocal about possible election fraud the past few years. 
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I don’t want it to happen, but they might rue the day they behaved like this when the shoe is on the other foot. 

A small, irrational part of me wants Democrats to behave the same way if they come to power just so the Republicans currently in charge get a taste of their own medicine. But I know that would be bad. We need leaders who are pro democracy and put our democracy over their own self interest. 

 
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Moiraine said:
I don’t want it to happen, but they might rue the day they behaved like this when the shoe is on the other foot. 

A small, irrational part of me wants Democrats to behave the same way if they come to power just so the Republicans currently in charge get a taste of their own medicine. But I know that would be bad. We need leaders who are pro democracy and put our democracy over their own self interest. 
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If the Dems do that, which is very possible and a frightening proposition, it will just perpetuate the myth of redemptive political vengeance, which might get some s#!t done in the next 2-6 years but will make things even worse in 10.

 
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