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Voter Fraud Fraud

April 13th, 2007

This is something that I have touched on in the past, but Josh Marshall, as part of his coverage of the US Attorney scandal, has an excellent, must-read post on how rare cases of voter fraud have been exaggerated beyond sanity as a political tool by this Republican administration (you should also read this NY Times article). In essence, “voter fraud” is a non-issue, represented almost entirely by (a) people paid to register voters who fraudulently sign up non-existent people, something which results in zero fraudulent votes, or (b) people who filled out forms in error, most of whom never even attempted to vote.

But Republicans have pretended that it is an epidemic of untold proportions, and have used the now-politicized Justice Department and their US Attorney cronies to “crack down” on it. The real aim: to bring back new versions of Jim Crow laws at the national level, discouraging or preventing minorities and low-income citizens from voting. And as a fringe benefit, they can remove people’s attention from their own widespread election fraud while making Democrats seem guilty.

What happened was that US Attorneys, acting as GOP attack dogs, specifically tried to make cases against Democrats (just as they lopsidedly prosecuted Democratic officials and left Republicans alone), but for all their effort, could only find 86 people to convict over 5 years (of which a third were for local elections, like sheriffs buying votes in small-town campaigns), barely more than one conviction per month nationwide–not enough in total even to swing the razor-sharp Bush-Gore deficit in Florida in 2000, even had all 86 been located there. Compare that to thousands of Democratic voters disenfranchised illegally by bogus “felon” lists, or Republicans signing up Democrats for voter registration and then destroying the forms–acts which, to the best of my knowledge, never ended in indictments or arrests, just like dozens of other well-documented cases of Republican election fraud. Meanwhile, the Republican effort to arrest Democrats for voter fraud wound up with people being deported or imprisoned for what amounted to clerical errors, while acquittals peppered a large number of the indictments.

Maybe they’d find more fraud if they stopped ignoring Republican offenders.

Yet another step towards a Brave New Conservative Country.

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  1. Tim Kane
    April 13th, 2007 at 17:07 | #1

    I’m sure I have mentioned here before about game theory.

    Game theory states that where two parties are locked into a perpetual game, the most rational strategy is for both parties to engage in civility/cooperation.

    The second best strategy by the way is tit-for-tat: I punch you in the nose, you punch me back. Tit-for-tat should bring the two parties back to cooperation and civility: I get tired of being punched in the nose, so I quit punching you back. This is what happened in Clintons impeachment. On trial for having lied about sex, the owner of Hustler magazine (I forget his name) offered one million dollars for the story of any women having sex with a congressman, democrat or republican, and in a weeks time we shuffled through three republican speakers of the house. Clinton was soon found not guilty. Tit-for-tat.

    One other aspect of game theory is, if you find out that the game is going to end, even if its many moves from now, it pays to start cheeting immediately. To those thinking that the game is perpetual the behavior of a non-cooperation and incivility seems irrational, and so they can be very slow to being induced to tit-for-tat.

    We saw this in European diplomacy in the run up to World War II. Hitler, bent on war, forsaw the end to the game of European diplomacy, and began to act uncivily. To the French and the Allies, this appeared insane, so they began bending over backwards to send him signals that they were for perpetuating peaceful diplomacy. This allowed Hitler to wrong foot the allies right off the continent of Europe. Even after the Battle of Britain, Hitler still held the initiative for nearly another three years and even then it only came crumbling down because of his stupidity.

    So the emergence of Movement conservatives has always left me wondering. The incivility and noncooperation of their actions reminded me of German diplomacy circa 1936 and moving forward. And Rove’s claim of a fifty year Republican ascendancy, despite having only the thinest, if any, of mandates (.05% questionable majority in 2004, negative in 2000) always left me wondering.

    Their incivility to me was either irrational, or they perceived an end to the perpetual game of politics. They were acting like they would never have to surrender power. The question was, how could they gaurantee perpetual rule, and therefore, an end to the perpetual game of politics?

    Republican, I mean all movement republicans, acted as if they would never need a moderate voter again in their lives, as if they would never have to share power with the opposition.

    The question left me wondering: How could they be so confident to allow themselves to act so corruptly?

    How?

    Now we know of at least one way they envisioned holding power – through the awesome power of the U.S. attorney’s office.

    I suspect that this alone was not all of it. Their creativity, cleverness and their boldness, in someways was everybit as dashing as Hitler’s in Europe. Lie the nation into a war, use the war to enhance the Presidents ‘mandate/power’ despite having a negative one, and then use that power to grab more,and more and so on.

    There’s a conspiracy here, that is for sure. A few very rich and powerful people have conspired to undermine the constitution. Under these movement Republicans, the constitution would become a sacred, symbolic, fig leaf figurehead, much like Japanese emperors during the shogun (and since, largely) – and effectively toothless and without power. Indeed, much of that has already happened.

    It remains to be seen if we shall ever get our country back. But one things for sure, we are no longer a democracy, but instead, an oligopoly.

    Now we know.

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