Wait aren't there some actual figures? Proving the numbers of fraud are extremely low.
Wait aren't there some actual figures? Proving the numbers of fraud are extremely low.
Why is anyone surprised that this happens? I've seen Obama ads on this website that say "Voting for Barack? We'll help you register here." What if I'm voting for someone else, are you still going to help me? I wouldn't be surprised to see someone who is either confused or doesn't have a lot of common sense get tricked into voting for someone other than who they intended by misleading advertising.
I also love all the "let's attack the source, and not the substance" arguments that fly around when people use biased media sources. I wouldn't be surprised to hear someone claim the world was flat because Fox News said it was round.
What's the fraud? Voting in Florida? The official prints out the form based on the activist's claim to have lived and be registered in Florida. Absentee voting is not fraud. Is it the activist's stated claim to let her voice be heard twice? That's not the official's idea, and (while not condemning the activist) she advises against it.
I don't know if entrapment is really relevant here because the official doesn't commit any crime, but the idea is to manufacture a scenario in which only one response is acceptable and if you don't get that response - FRAUD.
The only thing the official did is entirely responsible, legal, understandable, and acceptable given the information at the time. The fact that the activist later said "oh, I think I'll vote in Texas too, here's your opportunity to be a hard-nosed official, will you take it?", is irrelevant to that first act.
Ever since 2000 when Gore won but Bush became president I've started realizing how much of a sham US elections are.
I would be surprised to hear Fox News say the world is round. Seems to progressive an idea...
Anyhow, fraud is fraud. It's wrong, period. Yet you'll find people on both sides who does it, something the OP fails entirely to mention. The post is biased, the news is biased and the source is biased, and I prefer to get unbiased news when it comes to politics.
There are, done by the Bush administration, saying that voter fraud basically doesn't happen (about 90 cases over 10 years).
---------- Post added 2012-10-10 at 05:36 PM ----------
Because critical thinking is bad, amirite? Questioning the source is the first thing any good thinker does.
If voter fraud is so rampant, it calls into question every Republican elected in the last 50 years.
---------- Post added 2012-10-10 at 12:39 PM ----------
Sadly, if Faux news said world was flat, about 25% of the American population would believe it, and do everything in their power to make sure 'flat-earth' is taught in public schools.
Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelled of elderberries.
There are people who won't even click on the link, read the url address, and immediately claim the information is false, on both sides of the isle.
Who eats at either one of those places? A whopper is like $7-9 now, I can get a real hamburger from any number of hamburger places around me for that price, and it isn't frozen beef product with pink slime filler.
2004 was somewhat shocking too, with the exit polls being off in Ohio and Florida, and the Diebold connections to the Bush campaign and Ohio Republican Party specifically (and of course the usual voter registration purges).
I don't think US elections are a sham.
I think there's a lot of sleazy partisanship that really influences them, and obviously (to me) far too much influence of big monied interests in who can even run and the media coverage, but I don't think there's a behind-the-scenes predetermined winner or anything. It makes sense in some ways, the idea that "Oh hey, major recession coming, let's put some young black guy in office to take the heat for the next four years", but I think that the voice of the public (most of which manages to come through) is what decides elections here.
I'd like to think that more people realizing the actual behind-the-scenes manipulation would advance the cause of fair elections, but I don't really see it. The Republican who sees voter registration laws as such an obvious ploy to influence the states results is vastly outnumbered by the Republicans who say "A driver's license, that's reasonable security, I mean, who doesn't have a driver's license?"