The Democrats' voter fraud

The Democrats hope for a close election and want to use the pretense of that close result to try to sue their way into the presidency. The tactic is obvious and, with compliant judges, nearly worked in 2000. In St. Louis, the local Democrats found a token plaintiff for a fake lack-of-ballot-access claim and a useful idiot judge extended voting hours from the 7 pm cutoff until 10 pm (this is in addition to the improperly granted court orders allowing non-registered persons to vote, dead voters casting ballots and felons trying to vote -- the full extent of Democratic vote fraud in St. Louis in 2000 is examined in great detail here). In Chicago, the usual legion of dead voted because people used false names to vote. In Florida, the Democrats tried to steal the election result by negating military ballots, use of spurious standards of "voter intent", etc. -- although the result in favor of Bush in every single recount, despite many voters in the panhandle of the state (pro-Republican) staying home after the networks called the result a hour early (the western panhandle is central time, not eastern).

Thus, the Democrats ridiculous claim of 1,000,000 African-Americans disenfranchised by voting fraud in 2000 is one of those preposterous lies that both serves as the basis of the Democrats' get-out-the-vote campaign and is repeated so often that the credulous and colossally lazy mainstream media doesn't even deign to do the two minutes' of research necessary to eviscerate the claim. One debunking is by US Civil Rights Commissioner Peter Kirsanow here. Kirsanow correctly notes that: (a) in a "spoiled ballot" allegation, you cannot tell whose ballot is spoiled (not counted due to improper vote casting -- double vote in a race, other mistakes, etc.) because the ballots do not have the name, gender or race of the voter on them; (b) "Spoiled ballots do not equal stolen votes." This is because spoiled ballots are THE VOTER'S own fault. If you cannot follow the instructions, punch a hole, fill in the circle or flip the switch, your vote won't count. And if you're that incompetent, it shouldn't.

My favorite story of the post-2000 election is the one about the fourth grade class in Louisiana: the teacher copied the "butterfly ballot" of W. Palm Beach County, Florida that Democrats claimed confused voters into casting their votes for Buchanan instead of Gore, based upon the layout of the names. The teacher told her students to "cast their vote" for Gore by filling in the circle next to his name. Of her 25 students, 24 properly cast the vote; the one who didn't said he would never vote for Gore so he filled in Bush. None of the fourth-graders were confused between Gore and Buchanan. Once that story hit the news, that mini-furore died down.

Another debunking of the Florida myth is in the link in the title of this post. Here is an excerpt from that Opinion Journal editorial:

In Florida, as in many other states, the manner in which elections are conducted, including all of the essentials of the voting process, is determined at the county level. Which leaves the "stolen election" crowd with these inconvenient facts: In 24 of the 25 Florida counties with the highest ballot spoilage rate, the county supervisor was a Democrat. In the 25th county, the supervisor was an Independent. And as for the "felon purge list," the Miami Herald found that whites were twice as likely to be incorrectly placed on the list as blacks.

The real spectacle here is that some Democrats are only too willing to exploit the painful history of black voter disenfranchisement for some short-term partisan advantage. And it just might backfire. Democrats played up the Florida fiasco in the 2002 midterm elections, repeatedly telling blacks that their votes hadn't been counted in 2000. Rather than being riled up, many black voters believed what they were told and stayed home.

Yes, the Democrats' actions are disgraceful. More disgraceful is Jimmy Carter, the worst President since Harding, gallivanting from network camera to radio microphone to declare Florida's voting mechanisms incompatible with international standards. Leave aside his cheerful endorsement of the Hugo Chavez election "victory" in Venezuela that was almost certainly stolen through fraud and ACTUAL voter intimidation. This year Carter claims that Florida's voting system is improper because there is no uniformity in voting procedures (as if non-uniform procedures that allow people to vote are not better than uniform procedures that include the dictator's henchmen watching you cast the ballot; see, e.g., Iraq 2002, Nicaragua 1985, etc.) and therefore the Carter Center cannot even verify the elections like (supposedly) did in Venezuela. But Florida chose its system legislatively years ago when the Democrats controlled the legislature and the Constitution confers the power of deciding the time, place and manner of elections upon the state legislatures themselves. Carter's implication that Florida's constitutionally established system is inferior to Venezuela's corrupt "uniformity" is just another false parallel by the Democrats, whose actions in relation to voter fraud and election law are beneath contempt.