US Politics Mega-thread - Page 2023

On June 06 2015 03:13 cLutZ wrote:


Walking up to a voting booth and voting for someone else in a state without a voter ID law is a felony.

Also:
Definitively stolen election in WV
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/30/west-virginia-sheriff-fal_n_1242248.html
Possibly stolen in NY
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/12/21/officials-plead-guilty-in-new-york-voter-fraud-case/
Possible in MN (statewide election)
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/peter-roff/2010/07/20/al-franken-may-have-won-his-senate-seat-through-voter-fraud

On June 06 2015 03:34 Gorsameth wrote:

Sounds very American Politics tho which is very much 'with us or against us'.

The Obama administration is facing renewed pressure to release a top secret report that allegedly shows that Saudi Arabia directly helped to finance the September 11 attacks.

Rand Paul, the Libertarian Republican senator from Kentucky, is demanding that Mr Obama declassify 28 pages that were redacted from a 2002 US Senate report into the 9/11 attacks.

Mr Paul, who been vocal in attacking the bulk NSA spying programmes revealed by the rogue security contractor Edward Snowden and is running for president in 2016, has now promised to file an amendment to a Senate bill that would call on Mr Obama to declassify the pages.

The blacked-out pages, which have taken on an almost mythical quality for 9/11 conspiracy theorists, were classified on the orders of George W. Bush, leading to speculation they confirmed Saudi involvement.

On June 06 2015 03:35 GreenHorizons wrote:

Still not understanding how finding and reporting voter fraud is a felony or what your saying for why they offered cash for any evidence of voter fraud and found none.

So are those all of the cases, the worst, some? Just trying to figure out whether you are showing me some bad apples or it's supposed to be indicative that this is a larger problem?

None from after 2012?

On June 06 2015 04:24 cLutZ wrote:

Some more recent attempts, less successful.
http://www.bnd.com/news/local/crime/article20547705.html
http://www.nhregister.com/government-and-politics/20140926/bridgeport-state-rep-christina-ayala-arrested-on-19-voting-fraud-charges?fb_locale=id_ID
http://www.abc57.com/story/27258212/verdict-in-rev-edward-pinkney-election-fraud-trial

Plus the 2014 Illinois early voting machine "malfunctions". http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/10/27/calibration-issue-pops-up-on-maryland-voting-machines/


First, voter ID fraud is nearly impossible to detect, the methods people use of discovering voter fraud after the election is by comparing the names of people who voted with the names of citizens who are eligible to vote. If you commit ID fraud using the name of a real person there is no way to detect that once you have left the polling place. This is why I said the only way to test the voter ID fraud problem is to set up a sting operation where people try to vote illegally, obviously since this is a felony, it would need to be sanctioned by the FBI or other agency. That no such sting operation has occurred, and the results have not been published is basically a conspiracy on its own.

That said, its probably not a huge part of fraud, because its inefficient compared to registration fraud+ballot stuffing in the way I described above.

Second, I think its clearly a problem because there are many cases of caught voter fraud, which IMO is one of the hardest possible crimes to detect. It requires examining voter registrations, trends, polling, etc and is nearly impossible to prove unless the fraudster commits an egregious error and leave a smoking gun. Catching well-executed voter fraud basically impossible. It would be like catching the guy in Rush Hour (3?) where the casino owner planned to launder counterfeit money through his casino, except without the need to have printing plates or to purchase the suspicious materials, or having to report earnings to the IRS.

On June 06 2015 04:33 GreenHorizons wrote:


I'm just curious if you see the parallels between what your saying about voter fraud and what others, including myself, have said about corrupt and prejudicial policing along with intentional or unintentional bias in the criminal justice system at large?

EDIT: Police violating people's constitutional rights also.

On June 06 2015 04:48 cLutZ wrote:


I mean, there are parallels in that the system is set up in a way that lacks transparency. Its certainly hard to get accurate details on police shootings, or on how many Americans emails are read by the NSA, if that's what you mean.

Also found a small-scale study about in-person voter fraud. 97% success rate here. This is more proof that the FBI needs to do the sting, because apparently these investigators faced calls for prosecution against them.

Think of how often you stop by Walgreens or CVS. You run in and grab some Band-Aids or restock your ibuprofen supply. Maybe you even get a flu shot on your way to work.

Soon, it will be that easy for women in California to get birth control, too. Under a new state law, women will be able to go to a pharmacy, get a prescription for contraceptive pills, the ring, or the patch, get it filled and walk out 15 minutes later.

"For a woman who can't get in to see their doctor, the pharmacist will be able to furnish that for them now," says Lisa Kroon, a professor at University of California, San Francisco's school of pharmacy who oversees students who work at the Walgreens store on campus.

That pharmacy will be one of the first to take advantage of a new law in California allowing pharmacists to prescribe hormonal contraception. The law, SB 493, was passed in 2013. State health officials are now finalizing the regulations for the law to take effect. The California pharmacy board met Thursday to review them. The law is expected to be fully implemented later this year.

But the law goes beyond birth control pills. It also authorizes pharmacists to prescribe medications for smoking cessation and travel abroad. Pharmacists can administer routine vaccinations to children ages 3 and older. They can even order lab tests and adjust drug regimens for patients with diabetes, hypertension, or other conditions. Kroon says the idea is to make it easier on patients.

"Maybe a working parent can now come after work because the pharmacy is open later," she says.

The law was passed amid growing concern about doctor shortages. As more baby boomers hit age 65, and millions of people get health coverage under the Affordable Care Act, there aren't enough primary care doctors to go around.

On June 06 2015 04:52 GreenHorizons wrote:


How about in the potentially nefarious/self-protective motives for obscuring the data?

On June 06 2015 07:08 cLutZ wrote:


That too. Basically every person who looks for voter fraud using any method finds evidence of it.

On June 06 2015 07:08 cLutZ wrote:


That too. Basically every person who looks for voter fraud using any method finds evidence of it.

On June 06 2015 07:44 cLutZ wrote:
Possibly, but it is also undetectable, and the only evidence we have is that it is 97% effective when attempted.

On June 06 2015 07:54 TheTenthDoc wrote:


Ugh. As a pharmacist, I don't think prescribing birth control in retail is the greatest idea. You should pretty much do a physical every 6 months with a lot of them (to track changes in weight if nothing else) and no way in hell will you ever get a physical at most retail pharmacies.

Vaccines and smoking cessation are old hat at this point though.

According to the California Academy of Family Physicians (CAFP) ,
California Medical Association and Osteopathic Physicians and
Surgeons of California this bill puts patients at risk. The groups
cite the expanded authority to administer immunizations as unsafe
because safe administration requires extensive education,
experience and training. The groups also believe that the bill's
expanded authority to prescribe smoking cessation drugs could
result in increased likelihood of patient harm, particularly
because some of these drugs are associated with a substantial risk
of depression and should be used only under close medical
supervision. The groups write that allowing APPs to adjust or
discontinue drug therapy allows the pharmacist to interfere with
the physician-patient relationship and make treatment decisions
based on their own judgment. They also state that APP
qualification requirements in the bill are unclear and inconsistent
with expanded practice authority and that the bill allows
pharmacists to practice medicine without being subject to the
Medical Practice Act.

On June 06 2015 08:22 GreenHorizons wrote:
So maybe when the cases we do have are generally a few people faking a few hundred votes at most and the worst consequence was possibly Al Franken winning a seat that he kept without allegations of fraud, are compared to what is being discussed about policing and the justice system where people are being killed, imprisoned, abused, tortured, harassed, their rights violated etc... on the scale of hundreds and thousands and more. Families destroyed, futures lost, innocent people on death row. Government officials trying to illegally import illicit drugs to try to kill prisoners.

Considering the available evidence and known consequences, does it really make sense to be more concerned about voter id than to be concerned about the corruption and abuse throughout the criminal justice system and beyond?

On June 06 2015 08:40 kwizach wrote:

Uh what? If that kind of voter fraud is virtually nonexistent, which it is, that statement is meaningless. The actual impact of those voter id laws are voter suppression, so their net effect is clearly negative.

On June 06 2015 08:57 cLutZ wrote:

No. But I do think your problem is much more difficult to solve than purging registration lists a few months before every election.


You actually don't know its virtually nonexistent because, like I said, its virtually undetectable. Here is the simple procedure:
1. Obtain voter registration list.
2. See which registered voters have not voted in the past 2 elections.
3. Walk in, vote (97% chance you will not be caught, 0% chance you will be prosecuted, according the the only sting operation we know of), walk out.
Assuming someone followed that procedure, how would we even know they committed fraud? Whats the mechanism?

On June 06 2015 08:57 cLutZ wrote:

No. But I do think your problem is much more difficult to solve than purging registration lists a few months before every election.


You actually don't know its virtually nonexistent because, like I said, its virtually undetectable. Here is the simple procedure:
1. Obtain voter registration list.
2. See which registered voters have not voted in the past 2 elections.
3. Walk in, vote (97% chance you will not be caught, 0% chance you will be prosecuted, according the the only sting operation we know of), walk out.
Assuming someone followed that procedure, how would we even know they committed fraud? Whats the mechanism?

The Big Lie Behind Voter ID Laws

[...]

Similar laws have been aggressively pushed in many states by Republican lawmakers who say they are preventing voter fraud, promoting electoral “integrity” and increasing voter turnout. None of that is true. There is virtually no in-person voter fraud; the purpose of these laws is to suppress voting.

In Texas, where last week a federal judge struck down what she called the most restrictive voter ID law in the country, there were two convictions for in-person voter impersonation in one 10-year period. During that time, 20 million votes were cast. Nor is there any evidence that these laws encourage more voters to come to the polls. Instead, in at least two states — Kansas and Tennessee — they appear to have reduced turnout by 2 percent to 3 percent, according to a report released last week by the Government Accountability Office.

Voter ID laws, as their supporters know, do only one thing very well: They keep otherwise eligible voters away from the polls. In most cases, this means voters who are poor, often minorities, and who don’t have the necessary documents or the money or time to get photo IDs.

In her remarkable 143-page opinion in the Texas case, Federal District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos found that the law violated both the Equal Protection Clause and the Voting Rights Act, and that by forcing registered voters to track down and pay for qualifying documents, it functioned as an “unconstitutional poll tax.”

Most striking of all, Judge Ramos found that the rapid growth of Texas’s Latino and black population, and the state’s “uncontroverted and shameful history” of discriminatory voting practices — including whites-only primaries, literacy restrictions and actual poll taxes — led to a clear conclusion: Republican lawmakers knew the law would drive down turnout among minority voters, who lean Democratic, and they passed it at least in part for that reason. Judge Ramos’s finding of intentional discrimination is important because it could force Texas back under federal voting supervision, meaning changes to state voting practices would have to be preapproved by the federal government. (Texas appealed the ruling; a federal appeals court is now considering whether to put it on hold until after the election.)

[...]