Busting the Fraud of Voter Fraud

When we see or hear reporting on the non-issue of Voter Fraud, we must call it what it is -- AN EXCUSE FOR VOTE SUPPRESSION



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.

It should also be noted that the U.S. Attorney firing scandal showed that U.S. Attorneys were fired for not prosecuting voter fraud cases prior to the 2006 election.

And now the Wisconsin Attorney General, J. B. Van Hollen, who is also the co-chair of the Wisconson McCain campaign, is using faulty parameters to challenge names on the Wisconsin Voter Registration lists just weeks before the election, which will incorrectly purge thousands of voters -- under the phony guise of stopping one or two invalid votes.

This is rotten, anti-democratic Rovian trickery, and your segment on September 21st only served to legitimize this tool of Election Fraud.

You owe your listeners another segment in which you speak to one of the very knowledgeable experts on Election Protection, such as Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., NYU professor Mark Crispin Miller, blogger Brad Friedman, BBC reporter Greg Palast, or Congressman John Conyers, Jr.

Finally, I love NPR, have listened to it for 30+ years, and have been greatly saddened to see it succumb to this administration's pressure (i.e. Kenneth Tomlinson and the CPB). When NPR failed to report accurately on those December 2004 Ohio hearings and the outrage of Ohio voters, and the January 6, 2005 challenge to the election certification -- when so many people trust NPR -- it was a huge setback for Truth and Democracy in our country.

Please, take another look at this issue.

Thank you.

P.S.

To learn more about Election Protection, Vote Suppression, and other election issues:

http://www.freepress.org/econf/ Sponsoring a free online Election Protection Conference, September 26-28th. Also go to www.freepress.org for more articles and books on Election problems and excellent coverage of what happened in 2004.

www.stealbackyourvote.org Greg Palast and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. investigate current efforts by the RNC. An illustrated voter guide should be available for free distribution within the next two weeks, as well as a documentary film.

www.novoterleftbehind.net Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Democrats for America's Future join to EXPOSE, SPOT & REPORT Election Theft. Also has a Candidate Pledge: "I pledge that I will make sure that every vote is counted and that I will contest any evidence of theft or other voter suppression."

www.Bradblog.com The most determined, dedicated and effective blogger, a hero to many working on election protection, Brad Friedman, is the best single source for information on voting issues. Brad is also the co-founder of http://www.velvetrevolution.com http://www.velvetrevolution.us/electionstrikeforce/ and http://www.standingforvoters.org/ , where candidates on all levels can sign on to this pledge: "I, , pledge to use my candidacy, whenever feasible, to advance the preservation of democracy I will officially challenge the results of the election as provided by law if the combination of election conditions, incident reports, and announced election results calls into question the reliability of the vote count. I will wait until all valid votes are counted and all serious challenges resolved before declaring victory or conceding defeat."

Brad can also now be seen in the outstanding new documentary Murder, Spies & Voting Lies (the Clint Curtis Story) as well as Dale Earnhardt's documentary Uncounted, The New Math of American Elections.

Finally, www.markcrispinmiller.blogspot.com is the site of NYU Professor Mark Crispin Miller, author of Fooled Again about the 2004 election and, most recently, Loser Take All. He is an excellent speaker and a diligent advocate for voters, with a great email news group.