GOP cagey about voting in 2012

[Conservative]

Democratic Party Boxes | Artur Davis | Voter Fraud | The Daily Caller
But former Alabama Democratic Rep. Artur Davis told The Daily Caller that anti-fraud measures are needed to protect African-Americans from corrupt political bosses — many of them African-Americans themselves — who run Democratic Party machines in the South.

“What I have seen in my state, in my region, is the the most aggressive practitioners of voter-fraud are local machines who are tied lock, stock and barrel to the special interests in their communities — the landfills, the casino operators — and they’re cooking the [ballot] boxes on election day, they’re manufacturing absentee ballots, they’re voting [in the names of] people named Donald Duck, because they want to control politics and thwart progress,” he told TheDC.

“People who are progressives have no business defending those individuals.”

 

[taichiliberal]

Democratic Party Boxes | Artur Davis | Voter Fraud | The Daily Caller
But former Alabama Democratic Rep. Artur Davis told The Daily Caller that anti-fraud measures are needed to protect African-Americans from corrupt political bosses — many of them African-Americans themselves — who run Democratic Party machines in the South.

“What I have seen in my state, in my region, is the the most aggressive practitioners of voter-fraud are local machines who are tied lock, stock and barrel to the special interests in their communities — the landfills, the casino operators — and they’re cooking the [ballot] boxes on election day, they’re manufacturing absentee ballots, they’re voting [in the names of] people named Donald Duck, because they want to control politics and thwart progress,” he told TheDC.

“People who are progressives have no business defending those individuals.”

Reality check:

When asked by Talking Points Memo and Slate to specify instances of voter fraud to which he alleged, Davis declined to do so.



Emmanuel Cleaver, the chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, said that he was surprised by Davis' op-ed. "I saw it and was frustrated by it," Cleaver told Roll Call. "I don't know what that's all about. There are some people [who] believe he’s getting ready to switch parties. I have no idea. Needless to say, he doesn't confide in the CBC."

Davis recently donated money to the campaigns of two Republicans.

According to the Brennan Center for Justice at NYT, at least 34 states have enacted ID laws, and a flurry of those followed Republican gains in statewide elections last November. (Bills were passed but vetoed in five other states.) The center said that the bills passed this year have been more restrictive, with fewer exemptions, fewer forms of acceptable ID and fewer alternative ways for people without the required IDs to cast a ballot.

The Bush administration tried to crack down on voter fraud, but between 2002 and 2006, there were only 120 federal prosecutions (and 86 convictions) for that charge; almost four hundred million votes were cast during that period.

A study of the effects of a new voter ID law in South Carolina found that black precincts there were the most seriously impacted.


Artur Davis, Former Congressman From Alabama And Obama Ally, Changes Tack On Voter ID Law

 

[taichiliberal]

And here's a real eye opener, folks!

Votes in next Tuesday's Republican caucuses in Iowa will be cast on paper ballots and hand counted publicly at each and every caucus site, according to a report late this week from Politico's Jonathan Martin. In other words, Republicans will be relying on "Democracy's Gold Standard" when it comes to casting and counting ballots in their own election, in which they set all of the rules, even if they will not allow the same standards to be applied to elections in which Democrats will take part.

The BRAD BLOG : The Real America

Martin's story should come as great news for Election Integrity advocates and, in particular, Ron Paul supporters who have very good reason to be concerned about the process after witnessing --- first-hand and on video-tape --- blatant voter fraud carried out by Mitt Romney supporters in years past. The news is also welcome in light of a recent report suggesting the GOP would be counting votes in secret to avoid a purported "threat" by the hacktivist group Anonymous to disrupt next week's caucuses.

Though the article, if accurate, is wonderful news, it underscores, yet again, the Republican Party's almost indescribable hypocrisy when it comes to elections. Over the years, as we have detailed on hundreds (if not thousands) of pages at The BRAD BLOG, Republicans have eschewed both paper ballots and their public hand-counting at the polling place, insisting that computer cast and counted "ballots" are far more reliable than anything human beings, with their own hands and eyeballs, are able to do themselves with everyone in the public watching. (That is, except in cases where they are challenging the computer-tabulated results of an election, in which case they insist, appropriately, on publicly hand-counted paper ballots.)