Daily Thought Pad: Voter Fraud… Becoming an Increasing Problem in the US!!

The big 3 races have been called. Republicans win the Governorships in both Virginia and New Jersey… (as well as the other two major races in Virginia) Huge reflections on the mood of the country, considering Obama made personal appearances in both states… 5 in the solid Blue state of New Jersey, where Obama won by some 15% a year ago. The Independent, Hoffman lost to the Democrat, but if it hadn’t been for the Dede Scozzafava factor, that race would have gone to the Independent.

Could Votes Already Cast for Dede Scozzafava in NY-23 Swing the Elections There?

When we look at 5%+ of the vote that was wasted on Scozzafava in absentee ballots plus her name remaining on already printed ballots because of her last minute pull-out from the race in NY-23 and the 3000+ votes where the signatures were mismatched on absentee-ballot requests already found before Election Day in New Jersey… perhaps it is time to revisit the policies of absentee ballots?!? There is every reason to believe that the ACORN and SEIU voter registration and fraud antics will continue… no matter which of their 300 companies is involved.

The situation in NY-23 should also be a warning to the GOP. Choose and back candidates that represent the parties values and the values of the American People – Conservative and Independents.

Allowing Illegal Votes: Hurting Integrity of Electoral Process

Checking ID, restricting the reasons for absentee ballots, enforcing the rules to vote… all critical to maintaining the integrity and honest results of our electoral system and the value of one man/person one vote… for eligible American Citizens

Democrats Ask New Jersey Secretary of State to Ignore Mismatched Signatures on Absentee-Ballot Requests

This year, New Jersey’s registered voters can request a mail-in ballot for any reason. (Before 2005, voters needed to provide a reason for why they needed an absentee ballot.) The state received about 150,000 absentee-ballot applications this year.

On about 2,300 of those applications so far (now up to 3,000), the signature on the request form does not match the signature on the voter’s registration forms with the state.

In a development that is depressingly predictable, the New Jersey Democratic party is asking the state to provide provisional ballots for all these voters. Those ballots could, presumably, be used to overcome any narrow lead by Republican Chris Christie over Democrat Jon Corzine on Election Day.

A mass distribution of provisional ballots, at the request of a political party, would represent a significant change from established law. Currently, when a county clerk rejects an absentee-ballot request, the clerk tries to contact the voter — through mail, by phone, and in some cases, by attempting to contact the voter in person. And a person who has spoken to some of New Jersey’s county clerks says they’re granting wide latitude on signature styles; for them to reject a ballot request because of the signature, it has to be dramatically different from the one on file.

Could some of these cases be an election official misjudging the natural deviation in two handwriting samples from the same person? Certainly, and that's why the current system has clerks reaching out to rejected voters (presuming they actually exist) to sort out the discrepancy. But Democrats want to short-circuit the established methods of sorting out the problem, and in fact to ban rejections based on signature mismatches entirely.

Paul P. Josephson, a lawyer representing the New Jersey Democratic State Committee, wrote to Secretary of State Nina Mitchell Wells, asking her to “instruct County Clerks not to deny (vote by mail) applications on the basis of signature comparison alone.”

Josephson claims that “the data reveal a troubling disparity in rejection rates — from hundreds of applications in Atlantic (271 rejections, or 5.84 percent) and Hudson (362, or 4.13 percent) to just a handful in counties such as Hunterdon (6, or .20 percent) and Mercer (35, or .49 percent). We also note that staff and unaffiliated voters are being rejected at a far higher ratio than Republicans by a ratio of three-to-one.” But a source who has seen the data disagrees, contending the number of rejections is consistently proportional to the number of absentee ballots requested. This source described the rate of rejections as within a normal range, and he saw no clustering in particular regions.

Josephson contends that “even if the county clerks notify voters by mail that their applications have been rejected, too many of those voters will not have an opportunity to correct the situation.” But besides the county clerks’ efforts to contact voters laid out above, those who have not received an absentee ballot will still be able to vote on Election Day.

Democrats have never made this request before, not even in 2008, where many more New Jersey residents were voting through absentee ballots. Of course, that year Democrats Barack Obama and Frank Lautenberg were expected to win the statewide races handily.

Last year, the state party had no objections to the actions of county clerks; now, the party's counsel fears that the county-clerk staff “may be overworked and are likely not trained in handwriting analysis.” Strangely, these same county-clerk staffers managed to handle this year’s primary elections in New Jersey without any major complaints.

The fears of absentee-ballot fraud in New Jersey is not theoretical or far-fetched. Earlier this year, Atlantic City councilman Marty Small and 13 people who worked on his unsuccessful mayoral campaign “were indicted on charges they conspired to commit election fraud during the June Democratic primary through a variety of schemes involving messenger absentee ballots, state Attorney General Anne Milgram announced in Trenton.” One of those workers has already pled guilty. Five workers were indicted on similar charges in Essex County in August.

Suspicious minds see the letter as an attempt to create a pool of emergency votes to be used if Christie holds a small lead on Election Night. The Secretary of State has not yet responded to the Democrats’ request.

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Is ACORN Working Closely With Corzine? Yes Indeed… ACORN and SEIU