Tag Archives: voting

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Why Trump is Doubling Down on the Voter Fraud Fraud

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Ballot

“In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide,” US president-elect Donald Trump tweeted in late November, “I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.” Kind of a sore winner. And now that he’s no longer just president-elect but actually president, he’s doubling down and says he  “will be asking for a major investigation into VOTER FRAUD …”

That’s dumb. And dangerous.

Dumb because voter fraud is almost non-existent. There are rare cases in which individuals will try to vote illegally. Former Republican congressman Todd Akin of Missouri, for example, who got caught voting at his old polling place after moving, presumably to hide the move from his constituents and opponents. But the key word is “rare.”

Voter fraud is not a strategy used by candidates and campaigns to move the needle on election results. Why? Because it’s just about the most expensive, burdensome, unreliable and risky way imaginable to do that.  A successful voter fraud operation on any scale would require rounding up a whole bunch of people, trusting those people to cast the votes desired instead of just voting however they wanted to vote, and risking any or all of them getting caught (or sprouting a conscience) and blowing the operation. Too many co-conspirators and too many ways for things to go south fast and hard.

If we remove the letter “r” from the end of “voter,” things make more sense. Yes, elections are sometimes rigged. But they’re not rigged the hard way, by impersonating voters.

In some cases they’re rigged at the level of counting votes. Why recruit millions of voters as co-conspirators when a few key election workers (or voting machine programmers) are easier to find, probably more reliable, and far less vulnerable to detection?

In other cases they’re rigged by suppressing the other party’s turnout through fraud (for example, robocalls giving the wrong election date or mailings of fake absentee ballots with the wrong return address) or by law.

Which brings us to the danger of the “investigation” Trump is calling for: Its real purpose isn’t to uncover the truth, but rather to build support for “voter identification” laws.

Some, including me, have described these attempts to impose new and more onerous government identification schemes in the name of “fighting voter fraud” as a solution for a problem that doesn’t exist, but that’s not really accurate. It’s a solution to a problem. Not the problem of ineligible voters. The problem of eligible voters who don’t vote Republican.

Instead of this fake “investigation,” wouldn’t it be cheaper, and more honest, to just put a beige sign outside every polling place? As in: “You must be this pale to vote.”

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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The Virtue of Selfies-ness: Libertarians Fight for Free Speech at the Ballot Box

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Caryn Ann Harlos
Caryn Ann Harlos

It’s finally election time — as I write this, early voting is already under way in many states. You may have already voted. Even if haven’t, you probably know who you’re voting for. But if you live in Colorado, it’s illegal to tell anyone who you voted for, or who you think someone else might have voted for.

Yes, really. It’s right there in black and white in Colorado Revised Statute  §1-13-712, section 3: “No election official, watcher, or person shall reveal to any other person the name of any candidate for whom a voter has voted or communicate to another his opinion, belief, or impression as to how or for whom a voter has voted.”

Caryn Ann Harlos objects. Strenuously. She’s the communications director of the Libertarian Party of Colorado and sits on the party’s national committee, so you can probably guess how she’s voting. But she’s not allowed to tell you, even though “communications” is right there in her job title.

Oh, and according to section 2 of the same law, you can’t ask her, either: “No person shall endeavor to induce any voter to show how he marked his ballot.”

Harlos petitioned Colorado Attorney General Cynthia Coffman and Denver District Attorney Mich Morrissey to publicly recognize the blatant unconstitutionality of this law. They declined. So, in concert with two other plaintiffs and the aid of the libertarian Our America Initiative, Harlos filed suit  in US District Court. They’re asking, for among other things, a preliminary injunction and restraining order to protect voters, pollsters, journalists, and neighborhood gossips from arrest. The first hearing is scheduled for November 2nd.

Federal judges in New Hampshire and Michigan have already ruled against “ballot selfie” laws, as well they should have. It’s pretty much a constitutional slam-dunk. The act of voting doesn’t create an exception to your free speech rights. The scope of the Colorado law is particularly egregious. Coffman and Morrissey are wasting tax money — and disrespecting Colorado’s voters — by defending it.

The Libertarian Party’s candidates don’t win many elections. In fact, they usually come in a distant third in any three-way race. But Libertarian Party and libertarian movement activists are stepping up to defend your rights. If Caryn Ann Harlos has her way, you’ll be free not just to vote for a Democrat or Republican, but to publicly say you did so. Think about that when you enter the voting booth.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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Holiday Greetings From Planet Elizabeth Warren

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US Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) addresses the 2016 Democratic National Convention [public domain via Wikimedia Commons]
It is an election year and I am a political junkie. Therefore my inbox runneth over with political emails. Recently I’ve received numerous such emails (from avowedly “progressive” organizations) alerting me to US Senator Elizabeth Warren’s latest hobbyhorse. “Election Day should be a holiday,” says the Massachusetts Democrat, “so no one has to choose between a paycheck and a vote.”

How exciting! A new “birther” controversy motoring over the horizon in our direction! Senator Warren passed on a presidential run this year but enjoyed considerable buzz and may well reconsider in 2020 or 2024. So I’d like to see her birth certificate — long form, please — with a view toward contesting her eligibility. She’s obviously not from this country, and probably not even from this planet.

The federal government recognizes ten holidays:  New Year’s Day, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday, Inauguration Day (in years following presidential elections), Washington’s birthday, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Columbus Day, Veterans Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas.

How many of those do you get off work?

Unless you’re a government employee (or work for a bank), the answer is almost certainly  “not all of them.” And the further down the income and prestige scales your job is, the more likely the answer is “only a few of them, and usually without pay.”

Senator Warren would presumably know this if she was from, or lived in, or even spent much time visiting, the United States.

Surely she would have, at one point or another, shopped at Wal-Mart, or eaten at McDonald’s, or taken in a film (most theaters are open EVERY day, Christmas being the busiest day of the year in the movie business), or traveled by air, or hailed a taxi, on a holiday.

And when she did any of those things, how could she conceivably have avoided noticing the people who make it possible for her to do those things? You know, the workers whose job title isn’t “US Senator?”

Warren’s proposal wouldn’t it make it any easier to vote for anyone who has a hard time voting now. The people who have a hard time voting are the people who don’t get new government holidays off work with pay just because  a light bulb comes on in Elizabeth Warren’s head.

Early voting makes voting easier. Relaxed rules for absentee voting make voting easier. Voting by mail makes voting easier. Turning “Election Day” into two full days, 48 hours from midnight Friday night to midnight Sunday night, would make voting easier.

Calling for Election Day to be made a federal holiday, on the other hand, just gives people good reason to wonder if perhaps US Senator Elizabeth Warren is proof of extra-terrestrial life. And disproof of extra-terrestrial intelligence.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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