The Swamp logo

Voter ID Laws Are Disenfranchisement Politics As Usual

Donald Trump and Jeff Sessions have a plan.

By Rich MonettiPublished 7 years ago 4 min read
Like

Three to five million illegal votes and Jeff Sessions our new attorney general, the voter fraud issue is going on full alert in the Trump Administration. But the concern amounts to nothing more than the Republicans taking out their playbook and putting disenfranchising politics in full gear. Their constituency eager to engage and vilify, historical facts demonstrate that political parties do not steal elections by getting random people to vote twice.

According to a New York Times 2007 analysis, only 120 cases were filed with the justice department over a five year period. That said, I don’t think this necessarily makes my point. Voter fraud attempts to go undetected and cases filed can’t be used to determine the total number.

That’s where common sense comes in. First of all, in a country where less than 50% of the population votes in presidential elections, people are actually going to peruse the state to cast multiple votes. Please?

That entirely leaves a concerted effort from above. Let’s examine a state election. The New York State race for governor had 3.5 million voter turnout in 2014. So in an election with a 1% margin, approximately 17,500 votes would have to be altered.

The endeavor then becomes a matter of dividing up the labor. 3,500 people enlisted to vote 5 times, 1,750 to vote ten, etc. No matter, you now have a conspiracy consisting of thousands of people.

That means each person will have to be vetted, and just because they take part, doesn’t mean they’ll be mum if the authorities start poking around. In addition, what of those that decline you’re offer? This leaves your conspiracy far from water tight and puts the organizers in a pretty untenable position. A conspiracy on this grand scale must also carry penalties that escalate in kind.

What Election History Shows

The practical alternatives have been historically abound and typically involve getting control of ballot boxes. Or as Stalin once said, “It’s not who casts the votes, it’s who counts them.”

The Lyndon Johnson-Coke Stevenson Senatorial Election of 1948 is my favorite. Detailed in Robert Caro’s Means of Ascent, Stevenson held a 20,000 vote lead and results only remained from San Antonio, where Johnson lost by a 2-1 margin in the first primary. Instead, the rout was turned to an 87 vote victory for Johnson.

LBJ Stole 1948 Senate Election

LBJ

This had various county officials casting ballots for multitudes of absent voters. One precinct’s entire results suddenly appearing – almost all in favor of Johnson. Additionally, there were numerous areas like Jim Wells County where Johnson received 200 more votes when a seven in the hundreds place was changed to a 9. And even though a Federal District Court ordered Johnson’s name off the general election pending an investigation, Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black voided the move.

Who could forget Bush vs. Gore

But in a modern sense, Florida Attorney General Katherine Harris takes the cake in the 2000 Presidential election in which a computer program keyed on ex-felon names to do a mass purge on the voter rolls. Only using last names and since a highly disproportionate amount of the prison population is African American, 47,000 likely and legal Democratic voters were disenfranchised along with the felons.

Bush wins

Supreme Court

Of course, not even a 7th grade programmer would make that mistake, but the manipulation provided enough plausible deniability to escape punishment and throw the election to George Bush. So much for mobilizing thousands of people when you can be thousands of more times effective by feigning stupidity or making sure key supporters have proximity to the count. The same goes for perpetrating a mass disenfranchisement by raising the level of a false threat in the name of tough voter ID laws, and disenfranchising people who are more likely to vote Democratic.

I hope this clears up question as to the motives of the Republican Party, and if you’re still not deterred, here’s your options.

The first is you think the Democrats have their own versions of voter fraud, and you feel this is fair game, which I think is a valid point of view. That leaves that two possibilities – either you don’t believe in Democracy or you are fine with casting aside the voting rights act of 1965.

congresslegislationpoliticiansmovie review
Like

About the Creator

Rich Monetti

I am, I write.

Reader insights

Be the first to share your insights about this piece.

How does it work?

Add your insights

Comments

There are no comments for this story

Be the first to respond and start the conversation.

Sign in to comment

    Find us on social media

    Miscellaneous links

    • Explore
    • Contact
    • Privacy Policy
    • Terms of Use
    • Support

    © 2024 Creatd, Inc. All Rights Reserved.