do you have a retirement plan? congrats you are "profiting" from companies you disagree politically with. sorry to be the first one to tell you.
They haven't found one purposely fraudulent vote in a dedicated, two year, agenda driven investigation of over 1.5 million voters in the state. If they can't find anything but a few people screwing up their votes, would you call it not a problem and a phony outrage? Otherwise, supposing that these 5 people were legitimately trying to manipulate the election (which also means they absolutely suck at playing Boss Tweed), something that happens .003% of the time is hardly what I call rampant.
Even if you want to argue is pretty rare, which i don't disagree with, I still don't understand why we wouldn't want to make sure it doesn't become far more prevalent? we don't get a lot of nuclear meltdowns either, but i would like us to have some policies in place to stop one if it happens.
I think, for point of clarification, I'm thinking of this issue in terms of two separate concepts: 1. Requiring IDs for voting, for which I see no need to do so, but am not overly committed to opposing the requirement. 2. The idea that fraud is rampant in voting, affecting elections in an appreciable manner. It's just not happening.
I really doubt someone caught for voting fraud would actually admit to voter fraud, so, hard to say what was purposeful and what wasn't. The .003% is misleading. That is "votes fraud." It is the percent number of votes that were fraudulent. The number that I'm equating to "rampant" would be the (# elections where fraud occurred / total number of elections) * 100. The 0.003% defines whether the fraud was material or not. The determination of rare, or not, would be how many events it takes place in. If it was just this one election, I'd say it was rare and immaterial. But something happens in every election, even if small, then I'd say it was rampant but immaterial. If it only happened a few times, but in a large percentage, I'd say it was rare but material. And if it happened often, in a high percentage, I'd say it was rampant and material.
Oddly enough, I think saying this is a slippery slope argument is the slippery slope. He's suggesting just one item be changed. And by saying it is a slippery slope, you are implying that if we put some checks in place for this one thing, that we will end up putting checks in place for lots of other mundane things. Which would be the slippery slope. Might be a red herring, though.
In any election with millions of voter, of course, there are bound to be a small number of irregularities. I'd be curious to see a study in which votes are erroneously thrown out. I'm willing to bet those numbers are larger than the ones fraudulently voting.
Wait, you're telling me that Republicans don't have the apparatus or power to make such investigations? How are they doing so in Iowa?
Yes, it's 5 convictions, none of them for intentional fraudulent voting. You keep insinuating this massive problem of illegal votes and, yet, I see nothing offered in terms of substantive information.
they are doing so in Iowa in a very expensive and painstaking way over something that should be absolutely transparent. do they have the apparatus or power to do it timely, accurately or effectively? No. Have they had the power or clarity to do it in the past? Absolutely not. Interestingly enough, the lack of data you continue to cite is built upon a past about which you know nothing of the levels of fraud. Relying on public servants to tell us none exists is ostrich land. Russia's public servants say the same and they regularly claim to be a government of the people too, just like China.
So, we're still at the "everybody knows" level of proof? And, it isn't public servants whom are self reporting these numbers, there have been a number of investigations by various groups into the matter without much evidence of voter fraud, either. I suppose, though, it's just much easier to say that we are always lied to, so you can choose your own set of reality. The fact that the Iowa investigator has a very heightened self and political interest to find voter fraud, is finding little should be a logical inference that it's likely not a bug problem in today's voting.
