Miami Herald Columnist Fred Grimm wonders why the State Legislature didn't go after the real source of voter fraud, early voting, in their 2011 election reform bill that was more about voter suppression:
Florida seems to be spending a lot of time and effort and money trying to stomp out theoretical corruption instead of going after actual, real-life voter fraud. In 2011 the Legislature passed a 128-page election “reform” bill that cut back on early voting, put new restrictions on third-party registration groups (like that famously subversive League of Women Voters), and eliminated the long-honored practice in Florida of allowing voters who have moved since the last election to register the change of address at the polls on election day.
None of this gets at the actual source of voter fraud — an art that Miami knows well.
And:
“If preventing voter fraud were the true intent of [Florida’s 2011 election reform legislation] then there likely would have been attention placed on cracking down on what appears to be the not-so-uncommon practice of fraudulent absentee ballots in Florida,” said Daniel Smith, professor of political science at the University of Florida, testifying before a U.S. Senate inquiry in January.
Smith noted that Florida’s new election law, “rather than addressing absentee ballot fraud,” actually made absentee ballot fraud more difficult to prosecute. Before, state law required county elections supervisors “to send absentee ballots to voters’ registered addresses unless said voters were absent from the county, hospitalized, or temporarily unable to occupy residences.” Under the new law, absentee ballots must be mailed “to any other address the elector specifies in the request.”
Smith wondered whether the Republican-dominated Legislature’s reluctance to go after our most pervasive form of electoral fraud might have something to do with the results of the 2008 general election, when Florida’s registered Republicans casting absentee ballots led Democrat absentee voters by 10.8 percent.
6 comments:
If you want to take a one-hour training session this summer to help stop the abuse of our elders and the theft of their ballots, please write to electionsvolunteer@miamidade.gov and volunteer to help supervise the voting at ALFs.
There is probably nothing more important you could do this year to help reform your government.
Grimm is half right. I have been reading several recent stories how the state is aggressively purging dead and illegal immigrant voters from the voter rolls. That's also a big problem and I bet we have a number of dead people who voted by absentee ballot.
You must show more ID at the polls, that puts an end to dead people voting EXCEPT absentee. They don't have to show any ID. Grimm did address this in his article.
I worked for the Gore/Lieberman campaign in 2000. One of my jobs as their lawyer was to see whether any of Florida's dead voted. We did find a handful of cases, but it turned out to be was that someone mailed in their absentee ballot and then dropped dead before election day. Under the law, those votes count as much as the vote of a person who early votes and then dies before election day.
The truth is that there is no massive election fraud going on with early voting or absentees with regard to the dead rising to cast ballots.
The issue has been used as a smokescreen by the right to disenfranchise those groups they think will not vote for them AND who will not fight to keep their ballots: college students, minorities, and the newly naturalized.
On the other hand, the right wants to keep absentee ballots in place so that the elderly, who vote more conservatively, can vote. The balloteers often use fear and implied threats to get the elderly to vote their way.
I am convinced until absentee ballots are removed from the control of the politicians there will be fraud... A candidate or their agents should not be allowed to facilitate the getting of the forms, delivering of the ballots to the mail boxes or even help someone read the ballot.
Furthermore, those folks in group homes and living facilitities should be checked for competedence to vote... I know of an instance where an entire group home of mentally disabled adults were "changing" their party affiliation to match the owners needs for the primary. It makes me wonder if those people should be voting at all.
What do people have to cheat on everything? Isn't that how countries fall into dictatorships?
As long as Republicans are in charge and are the beneficiaries of absentee ballots, nothing will change.
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