Voter fraud is easy
Jane Balogh proved it. All you need to register to vote in King County is a utility bill. A phone bill will do. You don’t have to prove your identity any further than that, and you don’t have to prove your citizenship.
Sure, the registration application warns you “NOTE: Do not complete this form if you are not a U.S. Citizen”. It also asks you “Are you a Citizen of the United States?” and gives you the options of selecting “Yes”, or “No”. It goes further to warn you that
If you knowingly provide false information on this voter registration form or knowingly make a false declaration about your qualifications for voter registration you will have committed a class C felony that is punishable by imprisonment for up to five years, or by a fine of up to ten thousand dollars or both imprisonment and fine. (RCW 29A.08.210)
Do you think that will stop someone who has already ignored our country’s laws? Surely you recall the mass protests by the Hispanic communities that took place last year. Do you remember the huge voter registration drives that were supported by the Democratic party at the same time? Do you remember the claims that it was “racist” to oppose those drives?
With voter registration standards like King County’s we may already have hundreds or even thousands of illegal immigrants or other non-citizens registered to vote in King County now. All they need is a phone bill.
Here are a few highlights from the Seattle Times article about Jane Balogh:
Jane Balogh had a pretty good idea who was calling when the phone rang and the caller asked for Duncan M. MacDonald.
Duncan is the dog Balogh registered as a voter seven months before the November 2006 election.
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After making her point ? how easy it is for a voter to register illegally ? Balogh will be arraigned in King County Superior Court on Tuesday on a misdemeanor charge of making a false statement to a public official.
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Balogh, who lives with Duncan, an Australian shepherd-terrier mix, and four other dogs and four cats, registered her dog as a protest of a 2005 state voter-registration statute that she says makes it too easy for noncitizens to vote. She put her phone bill in Duncan’s name, then used the phone bill as identification to register him as a voter.
“I wasn’t trying to do anything fraudulent. I was trying to prove that our system is flawed. So I got myself in trouble,” she says.
If she accepts the plea deal offered by prosecutors, they won’t ask for jail time but will recommend she be sentenced to 10 hours of community service, pay a $250 fine and commit no other crimes for a year.
Acting Prosecuting Attorney Dan Satterberg says his office “can’t simply look the other way. They say you should let sleeping dogs lie, but you can’t let voting dogs vote.”
Why not? As far as I know nothing in Washington State law says that you must be a human to vote. Besides, the prosecuting attorney’s office ignored a whole pile of double-votes, votes by dead people and the like in 2004, and 2006. Why not ignore a dog registered to vote that didn’t actually vote?
To top it all off, if a dog can register to vote, and receive a ballot, what’s to stop the dog’s owner from actually voting twice? And if a dog can outwit the King County Elections office, how hard could it be for an illegal immigrant, or a felon that’s been barred from voting?
Originally posted at Perri Nelson’s Website.
On June 23, 2007 at 1:49 am, David wrote:
Ure Enough I Voted against Oregon’s Vote By Mail for the Same reason…
On June 23, 2007 at 11:41 am, Playin' Possum wrote:
As is the case with most of today’s "intractible" problems, the answer is enforcement.
Fuck it. There is no point in discussing this subject any longer. Neither political party has any credibility at all. Nobody does, as long as "If you knowingly provide false information on this voter registration form or knowingly make a false declaration about your qualifications for voter registration you will have committed a class C felony that is punishable by imprisonment for up to five years, or by a fine of up to ten thousand dollars or both imprisonment and fine. (RCW 29A.08.210)" means nothing.
If you have a plain, simple law with that kind of a whopper penalty and you - no matter who you are - can’t get anyone to prosecute anyone for direct violations of the law…
Then fuck it. It is obviously a silly law that only silly people worry about.
You’re either silly or you’re rabid over this governmental failure.
As for the dog lady… Prosecute her.
On June 23, 2007 at 1:30 pm, PerriNelson wrote:
This is just the sort of response I’ve grown to expect from you Possum. The profanity is new though, and doesn’t exactly help your argument.
This isn’t an intractible problem. And yes, the answer is enforcement. However with the current power structure in King County’s elections department, and the "go-along-to-get-along" attitude of the Prosecuting Attorney’s office enforcement isn’t going to happen.
That doesn’t make this a "silly" law that only "silly" people worry about. What it does is point out the corruption in the people that are charged with enforcing the law and the "Democratic" representatives that have taken the teeth out of the law and refuse to accept any kind of proof of citizenship as a pre-requisite for voter registration.
Yes I’m rabid over this governmental failure. Allowing non-citizens and felons who have had their voting privilege taken away to vote dilutes the influence of my legitimate vote. That’s not acceptable. It infringes upon MY rights and I for one refuse to be quiet about it.
We have a law. It isn’t being enforced. That doesn’t make me silly. It makes the Prosecuting Attorney criminally negligent. Jane Balogh knowingly commited a felony, and she should be prosecuted for it, as should the thousands of other people that did so in 2004 and 2006.
Norm Maleng, may he rest in peace, neglected his responsibility in this most basic matter of citizenship and government trust, and it appears that Dan Satterberg is following in his footsteps.
Our "duly elected" representatives in state government (and I use the scare quotes deliberately, since the law has no teeth, and election fraud is so easy), appear to want the status quo to continue as well. Otherwise we’d be required to prove that we are citizens before we register to vote. Otherwise we’d be required to show a state-issued photo ID to prove our identity at the polls before we could actually vote. Otherwise, instead of moving toward all mail voting, which invites rather than discourages fraud we’d be required to vote at the polls, where our identity could be confirmed.
Without this issue being brought to the constant attention of the people it affects the most, legitimate voters, nothing will change. Meanwhile, the people who most benefit by this type of election fraud are all members of the single major political party that almost always challenges election results when they lose an election — The Democratic Party.
On June 23, 2007 at 4:12 pm, Playin' Possum wrote:
Oh climb of the box…
If enough people really were rabid about this it wouldn’t go unchallenged. For that matter, it seems to me there is recourse by which you could sue to force enforcement.
Why don’t you?
And some things should be sworn at…
On June 26, 2007 at 1:03 pm, Perri Nelson wrote:
How interesting.
Rather than consider my argument you essentially tell me to shut up. "Climb of [sic] the box" indeed. If that’s your response to an argument you don’t like you are no different than many of the rabid left that wants to silence conservative talk radio rather than compete with it.
Then you say "if enough people really were rabid about this it wouldn’t go unchallenged." It has not gone unchallenged. By speaking about it (OK, writing) I have challenged it. By her acts of civil disobedience, Jane Balogh has challenged it.
There have been lawsuits brought to correct this problem. They came to essentially nothing.
The true recourse we have as citizens is to be informed and to vote against the corrupt public officials that won’t do their jobs. We should vote against politicians that seek to encourage voter fraud for their own political gain.
That won’t happen unless people are informed. It won’t happen if people who are outraged "climb off the box."