EDITORIAL: The art of stealing elections

The Washington Times ^ | 12-15-13 | Editorial Board

[afraidfortherepublic]

Stealing elections is an old game politicians play. Lyndon B. Johnson, the 36th president, got to the U.S. Senate in 1948 by “winning” the closest race in Texas history by a margin of 87 votes out of more than a million cast. An election judge in tiny Alice, Texas, said he counted more than 200 names on the voting roll for Box 13 that were written in alphabetic succession in the same hand, same color of ink. When a federal court subpoenaed Box 13, it was discovered to be “lost.” LBJ took his seat in the Senate. Voting machines were supposed to put an end to such election-night chicanery, but Earl Long, the colorful governor of Louisiana, where fraud is the national sport, boasted that “I can make a voting machine play ‘Home on the Range’ all night long.”

Evidence of such fraud repeats itself on Monday in Virginia when election officials begin the thankless task of recounting the more than 2.2 million ballots cast in the Nov. 5 state attorney general’s race, where just 165 votes separate the two candidates.

The fishiest results were posted in Fairfax County, where enough provisional ballots conveniently appeared to give state Sen. Mark R. Herring, the Democrat, an edge over state Sen. Mark D. Obenshain of Harrisonburg, the Republican. “They kept finding ballots,” a highly placed Republican source says. Mr. Herring was finally declared the winner by .007 of 1 percent of the vote in the final tally, making it the closest statewide race in Virginia history.

Republicans nearly always get the sticky end of the wicket. In 2008, Al Franken, the Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate in Minnesota, trailed his Republican opponent by 215 votes out of 2.9 million cast.

[afraidfortherepublic]

Just because we are subject to voter fraud in WI

FReep Mail me if you want on, or off, this Wisconsin interest ping list.

[afraidfortherepublic]

FTA: The man who will succeed Ken Cuccinelli as attorney general shouldn’t get the job based on his skills of prestidigitation. The lore of election-stealing is already sufficient unto the day.

[Cvengr]

FWIW, Alice, TX is one of the few areas of bigotry I’ve experienced in Texas. It tends to be a geographical phenomenon, about a county in size. In the case of Alice, TX, they had no love for their fellow man. They treated seasonal migrant workers from Mexico like trash. Same area as the Rockefeller Ranch and the King Ranch. King wasn’t as bad as Rockefeller, but the entire area stank of wealthy liberal bigots. Never saw it elsewhere in Texas.

[The Working Man]

I had a neighbor who advocated the death penalty for vote fraud. He claimed that it was a crime equivalent to capital murder and treason. I wasn’t sure at the time but now after a couple of decades I find that I agree with him.

[txhurl]

Also FTA: The General Assembly has the power to decide disputed elections or even to call a new one if an appeal is filed by Dec. 23.

Ken would win in a new election... but is that a good precedence to set? Don’t like the results, schedule a re-do?

[skinkinthegrass]

yeah, "they only want your vote..not
the stink/smell of flyover country"...
the stink of the Establishment, is fine for them.

[Eska]

Lisa Murkowski lost the Repub Primary to Tea Party Candidate, ran a write in campaign that fall. Lisa attended yearly Alaska Native Conference, promised them all the Gold they could eat if the Dem Indians voted for her; and they did. Entire villages, hundreds of votes in one person’s handwriting voted write in for Lisa. Repub Judges (in her corner) refused to even consider the illegalities; move along,nothing to see here. Today we have Murkowski voting with Obama 70% of the time. Corruption goes both ways, I tend to agree with what Cruz is saying.

[abclily]

For the 2012 election, our new voting machines were bought from a German company owned by George Soros. It will be a LONG time before Republicans ever win the presidency again. And the Republican politicians know it.

[ArtDodger]

Much easier now, with the electronic devices. Just install a worm that makes every 3rd R vote turn into a D, then the worm romoves itself at 7pm. Not a trace and no need for the car trunks full of phoney ballots..

[txhurl]

To replace those ten million that burned up in that Houston warehouse fire?

Do you have any sources or links for this voting machine buy, tia?

[afraidfortherepublic]

Arrrrrrrgggggghhhhhh!

[Popman]

Wait....but Eric Holder said voter fraud doesn’t exist....

[afraidfortherepublic]

The Cuccinelli loss is not what is in dispute. The dispute os over the AG election — Obenshain and Herring, I think.

Unfortunately, McAwful was elected. Virginians are just going to have to live with that.

[txhurl]

They can’t just re-run the original ballot? See what happens this time around? /wishful thinking

[leprechaun9]

Stealing elections is a full time industry. As one of the lecturers in a course that I took on Responsibilities of Election day workers said: RECOUNTS ARE WON BEFORE THE ELECTION NOT AFTER!

1. In one election, the line with the candidate names was slipped one position to the right. Therefore no votes were cast for the leading name on that line in some of the districts. That candidate received NO votes in that district.

2. In one election that I worked, the person in charge of Election Integrity received Court permission to spot check the voting machines BEFORE they left the county warehouse where the machines are stored. (20) machines were checked from districts where suspicious results happened in prior elections. (7) of the machines were found to have non-zero totals. Instead they were set to 950 to 980 (1000 vote counter). This meant that the first votes would not count until enough votes were cast to bring the counter to 000. This also meant that the TOTAL VOTE counter for the machine would not be less than the number of votes received by any candidate.

3. It is important to make sure that any candidate challenger know the common non-English language of the district. I worked in an election where we had prepared for this. The person running the voting machine was telling voters who the preferred candidate was, in his non-English language. The incident was recorded with copies filed with the on site election official, the County Board of elections and the candidate campaign staff. The forms were prepared in triplicate before the election. The paper trail is essential in all challenges and recounts.

There are many more examples and rest assured that the introduction of new electronic machines will spur the adoption of different schemes to rig an election. The industry is alive and well.

[ez]

It is mathematically impossible for one party to consistently win every close election without cheating. Just sayin.

[livius]

I remember being a poll worker at a polling place in San Francisco where bus-loads of elderly Chinese (wearing buttons for the Dem candidate) were brought in by a radical union and handed over to a legally permitted Chinese-speaking “assistant” who showed them on a paper who to vote for and in some cases even went into the voting booth with them to “help” them. There was nothing we could do about it.

It’s a little harder to get away with this in Spanish, because more non-immigrants speak or read it, but it’s very easy in a place that has a large group of immigrants in a less-familiar language, such as a Chinese dialect, an Arabic language, Creole, etc. And it happens every election.

[healy61]

Absolutely death. When someone participates even one vote, that is my life they are messing with.

[central_va]

A veteran’s vote should count 10x the normal citizen vote.