Gov. Rick Scott: voter purge lawful, feds are wrong and breaking the law

[DaVinci 0]

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another content free response.

Replying, in kind, to yours..... For example, that last one sure added content.

[rushmc 23]

http://www2.timesdispatch.com/news/virginia-politics/2012/jul/25/tdmain01-romney-camp-asks-va-to-probe-voter-forms-ar-2081517/

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The errant mailings from the Washington-based nonprofit group Voter Participation Center have befuddled many Virginia residents, leading to hundreds of complaints.

The organization has been mass-mailing the forms — pre-populated with key information such as names and addresses — to primarily Democratic-leaning voting blocs such as young adults, unmarried women, African-Americans and Latinos.

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[ChangoLanzao 0]

http://www2.timesdispatch.com/news/2012/jul/21/3/the-voter-participation-centers-video-53212-vi-39606/

[rushmc 23]

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Current estimates by Pew Research indicate that 24 million registration records are now inaccurate. Although federal law exists to prevent such a sad statistic, it has become clear that a growing number of local election authorities are failing to perform their most basic function.

http://www.pewstates.org/uploadedFiles/PCS_Assets/2012/Pew_Upgrading_Voter_Registration.pdf

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[tkhayes 348]

It took me a while to find the time to read it, but it is a good read. The points that I see in it:

1. Primarily, there is no indication that ANY of their findings has or will lead to voter fraud. In fact, they only make one vague reference to the susceptibility of voter fraud.

2.

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More than 1.8 million deceased
individuals are listed as voters.

- these people, I expect will not vote. no problem.

3.

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Approximately 2.75 million people
have registrations in more than one
state.

These people still will almost certainly only vote in one place - they may not even remember that they are also registered somewhere else.

4.

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For example,
census and other data indicate that as
many as one in four young Americans
moves in a given year.

I see this as not a fraud problem, but a "How do we get more people to register" problem?

5.

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Canada, which uses modern
technology to register people as
well as data-matching techniques
common in the private sector,
spends less than 35 cents per voter
to process registrations, and 93
percent of its eligible population is
registered.

Go Canada!

6.

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Additionally, in 2008, more than two
million provisional ballots—issued when a
voter encounters a problem at the polls—
were cast, requiring election officials to
verify each voter’s eligibility and determine
whether their vote counted. Almost half of
the uncounted ballots for which there are
detailed data were rejected because the voter
was not on the registration rolls.

WTF? I find this disturbing. Instead of trying to find ways for us to remove people from the roles (the current legislation), maybe we should be spending our time trying to find ways to get valid votes and fixing the errors on the provisional ballots, instead of discounting them. This will not only improve the voting system, but will also minimize the effect of voter fraud (if there is any). This is a budget and staffing problem.

7.

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Clark County, NV, which includes Las
Vegas and has been particularly hard hit by
home foreclosures, is a good example of the
burden mobility puts on election officials.
In a six-month period, spanning the end
of 2009 and the beginning of 2010, more
than 150,000 of its nearly 700,000 active
registered voters—more than 20 percent—
moved from the address on file with the
county election office.

Hmmm, so stricter banking regulations to help prevent things like the collapse of the housing market are also good for the electoral system? Hmmmm....

8.

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Far too often, the submitted registration
forms are incomplete, or present
duplicate or conflicting information.31
In response, local election officials must
redirect limited resources to hiring large
numbers of temporary data-entry staff to
manually process and verify applications.
This comes at a particularly busy time
when other tasks, such as recruiting and
training poll workers and preparing for
Election Day, must be done.

Damn straight skippy! I demand and expect my election offices to do everything they can to get votes in, get them counted, get them accurate and get as many people into the system as possible. I do not see this as a problem, but a reality. Again, budget and staffing. I would rather spend money trying to make votes 'valid' and fix the errors, than spending money removing votes and voters.

9.

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The data indicate that at least 51
million citizens appear to be unregistered
in the United States, or more than
24 percent of the eligible population.
Conversely, Canada, which uses
innovative technology and data-matching
methods, has 93 percent of its eligible
voters on the rolls.

Go Canada!

sounds like there is a lot of room for improvement. But back to the main thread.

There still is no indication one way or the other that voter fraud is a statistical issue. Helping people vote and helping people register to vote should be the motivation - not only will it fix the problems listed in the article, it will further minimize any effect that voter fraud may have.

Instead we waste our time trying to limit the people that have already registered ad deny them their rights. This is not a republican or democrat problem, it is a system problem and further demonstrates how stupid we are as a society that we cannot address the real issues (not enough people registered to vote), but focus on the smokescreen of 'voter fraud'.