Monday - July 12, 2010

And this is news?

Felons Voting Illegally May Have Put Franken Over the Top in Minnesota, Study Finds

The six-month election recount that turned former “Saturday Night Live” comedian Al Franken into a U.S. senator may have been decided by convicted felons who voted illegally in Minnesota’s Twin Cities.

That’s the finding of an 18-month study conducted by Minnesota Majority, a conservative watchdog group, which found that at least 341 convicted felons in largely Democratic Minneapolis-St. Paul voted illegally in the 2008 Senate race between Franken, a Democrat, and his Republican opponent, then-incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman.

The final recount vote in the race, determined six months after Election Day, showed Franken beat Coleman by 312 votes—fewer votes than the number of felons whose illegal ballots were counted, according to Minnesota Majority’s newly released study, which matched publicly available conviction lists with voting records.

Furthermore, the report charges that efforts to get state and federal authorities to act on its findings have been “stonewalled.”

“We aren’t trying to change the result of the last election. That legally can’t be done,” said Dan McGrath, Minnesota Majority’s executive director. “We are just trying to make sure the integrity of the next election isn’t compromised.”

He said his group was largely ignored when it turned over a list of hundreds of names to prosecutors in two of the state’s largest counties, Ramsey and Hennepin, where fraud seemed to be the greatest.

A spokesman for both county attorneys’ offices belittled the information, saying it was “just plain wrong” and full of errors, which prompted the group to go back and start an in-depth look at the records.

“What we did this time is irrefutable,” McGrath said. “We took the voting lists and matched them with conviction lists and then went back to the records and found the roster lists, where voters sign in before walking to the voting booth, and matched them by hand.

“The only way we can be wrong is if someone with the same first, middle and last names, same year of birth as the felon, and living in the same community, has voted. And that isn’t very likely.”

The report said that in Hennepin County, which in includes Minneapolis, 899 suspected felons had been matched on the county’s voting records, and the review showed 289 voters were conclusively matched to felon records. The report says only three people in the county have been charged with voter fraud so far.

Shit piss and corruption! I’ve said it a hundred times, and I’ll say it again: Every town, every county in every state need to purge their voter rolls and re-register everyone all over again. This time with proper ID, proof of citizenship, SSN matched to the Social Security database, and a criminal background check. A photographic ID card needs to be issued, and no one will be allowed to vote without it.
( I leave it up to you to solve the absentee voter problem, but it isn’t very hard. Make Election Day the last day of Election Fortnight and 80% of absentee balloting would be unnecessary. Clear out those laws that allow for Motor Voters and Lazy Voters: absentee voting is for actual disabled folks and soldiers oversees only. Make the military vote first, perhaps a month ahead of time for those oversees, and put in validation checkpoints along the way so those votes don’t evaporate. That should handle another 10% of it right there. You figure out the rest. )

You provide more information to the credit card companies and the DMV than you do to your local board of elections. But without ensuring that the people who do vote are the people who are allowed to vote and no others, then the system is a fraud. And the results ... see above. And in many other places, like the state of Washington.

This garbage is by no means limited to Minnesota. It’s in your state too. In your county. Right in your own town. Mine too. The people hired by the government to keep the voter rolls clean and up to date do not do their jobs. This is done purposely: the technology already exists and the computer systems are in place. It’s no bet at all that Visa and MasterCard have a far better list of their members than the government has of it’s voters. It’s the same technology too, which means the whole job could be outsourced to Discover, who could do the work for nothing more than a tax write-off. Social Security could do it as well, and so could quite a few other government databases.

Anyone who has ever gone through the background search process while applying for a gun permit or a security clearance knows what I mean. There are databases out there that the rest of us don’t even know exist. Adding just one bit and 4 characters to the NCIC database record - a Y/N flag for whether a conviction denies the criminal the right to vote, and if Y the 4 digit year when that denial expires; 9999 = “never”, and Y2K-aphobes should see that’s good for another 8000 years - and sharing those 1 Y/N value with the elections people when an SSN inquiry is made is all it takes. Heck, many polling places have a cop nearby or on hand, don’t they, and it’s certainly fine for any cop to access that database. Double Heck, just have NCIC build an external hash table and let the elections people access that. Concerned citizens or criminals coming off of probation would be advised to make sure their number is in the clear before the voting starts. You don’t even need a day-month-year code in the NCIC database, since you’d write the table entry code to look at Election Fortnight and judge accordingly. Probation ends in June? You’re in. Ends October 25th? Sorry, you get your voting rights back the year after. You don’t have to be smarter than a fifth grader to write code like that. Third graders could probably do it these days.

It really is that easy. The technology is there. Are you kidding? The technology is there so that any citizen ought to be able to walk into any polling station in the country and vote in their local election, and then not be able to vote anywhere else in that same election. All that would take is one more flag bit (voted/didn’t vote yet) at NCIC and a flag-clearing operation run the day after. And that’s one line of code, m’kay? Piss simple stuff here people.

Meanwhile in Missouri it’s the same old dirty story:

Last year, Justice abandoned a case it had pursued for three years against Missouri for failing to clean up its rolls. When filed in 2005, one-third of Missouri counties had more registered voters than voting-age residents. What’s more, Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan, a Democrat who this year is her party’s candidate for a vacant U.S. Senate seat, contended that her office had no obligation to ensure individual counties were complying with the federal law mandating a cleanup of their voter rolls.

The case made slow but steady progress through the courts for more than three years, amid little or no evidence of progress in cleaning up Missouri’s voter rolls. Despite this, Obama Justice saw fit to dismiss the case in March 2009. Curiously, only a month earlier, Ms. Carnahan had announced her Senate candidacy. Missouri has a long and documented history of voter fraud in Democratic-leaning cities such as St. Louis and Kansas City. Ms. Carnahan may now stand to benefit from voter fraud facilitated by the improperly kept voter rolls that she herself allowed to continue.

Mr. Adams’ allegations would seem to call for the senior management of Justice to be compelled to testify under oath to U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. But Justice is making none of its officials available and is refusing to enforce subpoenas issued by the commission. The more this story develops, the more it appears Justice is engaged in a massive coverup of its politicization of voting rights cases.

Elected officials should be trotted out to the pillories once per year, everyone from the town clerks or is whoever responsible for the rolls, all the way up to the governor. Are the voter rolls clean, accurate, and up to date (accurate to within 60 days)?

Yes? Great! You may keep your jobs. And your skin.

No? 10 lashes for each of the clerks, and 2 lashes more for each level of administration above that. In some states I think that would mean about 100 lashes for the governor. Punish them, then send them on their way, unemployed. Draw names from a list of unemployed college graduates and give them the jobs at the same pay and benefit level. Call a special election in 45 days to replace the elected officials.

One step towards restoring America is restoring people’s faith in America. Guaranteeing clean elections and up to date voter rolls would go a long way ... and we’d never ever be plagued by an Al Gore “selected not elected” month of hell again. With broadband just about everywhere, and computers already everywhere, it should not take more than about ... half an hour after the polls close for anyone in America to know the exact vote count in every state, county, and town. WTF, they can do it for American Idol. How about doing it for American Democracy?

Posted by Drew458     on 07/12/2010 at 03:55 PM   
Filed Under: • Corruption and Greed • No Shit, Sherlock • Politics •  
• Comments (8) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

DISCLAIMER

THE SERVICES AND MATERIALS ON THIS WEBSITE ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE HOSTS OF THIS SITE EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS ANY AND ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF SATISFACTORY QUALITY, MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, WITH RESPECT TO THE SERVICE OR ANY MATERIALS.

Not that very many people ever read this far down, but this blog was the creation of Allan Kelly and his friend Vilmar. Vilmar moved on to his own blog some time ago, and Allan ran this place alone until his sudden and unexpected death partway through 2006. We all miss him. A lot. Even though he is gone this site will always still be more than a little bit his. We who are left to carry on the BMEWS tradition owe him a great debt of gratitude, and we hope to be able to pay that back by following his last advice to us all:

1. Keep a firm grasp of Right and Wrong
2. Stay involved with government on every level and don't let those bastards get away with a thing
3. Use every legal means to defend yourself in the event of real internal trouble, and, most importantly:
4. Keep talking to each other, whether here or elsewhere

It's been a long strange trip without you Skipper, but thanks for pointing us in the right direction and giving us a swift kick in the behind to get us going. Keep lookin' down on us, will ya? Thanks.

THE INFORMATION AND OTHER CONTENTS OF THIS WEBSITE ARE DESIGNED TO COMPLY WITH THE LAWS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. THIS WEBSITE SHALL BE GOVERNED BY AND CONSTRUED IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE LAWS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND ALL PARTIES IRREVOCABLY SUBMIT TO THE JURISDICTION OF THE AMERICAN COURTS. IF ANYTHING ON THIS WEBSITE IS CONSTRUED AS BEING CONTRARY TO THE LAWS APPLICABLE IN ANY OTHER COUNTRY, THEN THIS WEBSITE IS NOT INTENDED TO BE ACCESSED BY PERSONS FROM THAT COUNTRY AND ANY PERSONS WHO ARE SUBJECT TO SUCH LAWS SHALL NOT BE ENTITLED TO USE OUR SERVICES UNLESS THEY CAN SATISFY US THAT SUCH USE WOULD BE LAWFUL.

Copyright © 2004-2015 Domain Owner