In response to the September 21 NPR Morning Edition Sunday's Report on Voter Fraud in Wisconsin:
YOU NEED TO KNOW:
There is a major difference between Election Fraud and Voter Fraud.
Election Fraud is a broad term for the manipulation of election results--away from the choice of the majority of eligible voters.
Voter Fraud is the term for voting and/or registering to vote by people ineligible to vote, such as non-citizens, non-residents, those with fictional identification, and, in some states, felons.
Election Fraud can alter the vote tally by tens of thousands of votes, and when carefully targeted, can alter the results of the Presidential Election and the control of Congress.
Voter Fraud is extremely rare, and has little or no effect on results.
Election Fraud is accomplished by:
1. Altering votes
2. Not counting votes
3. Limiting votes
Voter Fraud has been an excuse to enact election laws and encourage policies which accomplish #3 on the previous list, "limiting votes", particularly in low-income and urban areas, which tend to vote Democratic.
Voter Fraud was only raised as an issue after the 2004 election to distract from the multiple instances of Election Fraud investigated and documented in the January 6, 2005 report based on the Field Hearings held by the Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee during December 2004 in Ohio, entitled "Preserving Democracy: What Went Wrong in Ohio". This report became part of the Congressional Record that same day in January when the late Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs-Jones, backed by Senator Barbara Boxer, stood up to Vice President Cheney during the certification of the election and challenged the Ohio results.
The following March, as the soon-to-be imprisoned Congressman Bob Ney, Chair of the House Administration Committee (and author of the Diebold/Jack Abramoff- influenced Help Amerca Vote Act) finally prepared to hold a hearing on the irregularities of the 2004 election, suddenly, out of the blue came a self-proclaimed expert on "voter fraud", Mark "Thor" Hearne of the brand new "American Center For Voting Rights" to testify at the hearing and at the Carter Baker Election Reform Panel the following week.
Watching the insignificant issue of voter fraud take focus away from what really happened, Brad Friedman, investigative blogger for wwwbradblog.com, dug a little into this new expert and his organization, and was able to quickly reveal that Mr. Thor Hearne turned out to be the General Counsel for the Bush/Cheney 2004 campaign.
A later report on Voter Fraud for the Election Assistance Commission was withheld from the public because it found voter fraud was widely-understood to be a non-issue. It was only released after the language was altered to suggest that voter fraud's significance was still in dispute.
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