Has voter fraud been a problem in the ATL? (gated, live)

[arjay57]

Originally Posted by CA_Vol

So much cutting and pasting all proving there is a "study" for everyone. It's ironic how liberals don't want a robust study on voter fraud because there isn't sufficient proof that it exists, but the proof will never exist if it isn't adequately studied. Once again, intellectual honesty be damned.

I'd say a study that tracks and verifies all 2.1 million votes and has only 5 that haven't been verified is pretty robust.

What else should they have done?

[CA_Vol]

Was Georgia a swing state in 2006? I think it's fair to suggest GA is not the best example of where voter fraud efforts would be attempted.

[fourthwarden]

Originally Posted by CA_Vol

So much cutting and pasting all proving there is a "study" for everyone. It's ironic how liberals don't want a robust study on voter fraud because there isn't sufficient proof that it exists, but the proof will never exist if it isn't adequately studied. Once again, intellectual honesty be damned.

More like that the robust studies have already been done, and that doing more on the scale that is being attempted is simply a waste of resources. In fact, it's not even a 'study for everyone' situation since, in line with how this kind of thing is supposed to go, the outlyer study was reviewed and considered, and rebuttals were made to explain where the errors occurred.

The bulk of the material, though, agrees that voter fraud is not a problem in this country.

Given the track record of those in charge of it, it shouldn't be any wonder as to why, despite that fact, the current administration is trying to move forward anyway. Chances are good that this will simply result in further efforts of voter suppression as recent history has shown, while also acting as an attempt to divert attention from the administration's worsening internal situation.

The actual irony is how ready conservatives seem to be to give up information to the federal level while also pushing laws that limit the freedom of American citizens to engage in their right to vote.

[BR Valentine]

This is political theater intended to create FUD regarding voter fraud. They aren't going to find irrefutable evidence of widespread voter fraud. The end game is having any data that can then be spun to advocate for more restrictive voter registration laws. The happy coincidence is that this boondoggle can be used to smooth Trump's perpetually bruised ego too.

[atler8]

Originally Posted by fourthwarden

That particular study has plenty of issues, and Snopes as a detailed explanation of why it arrived at the conclusions it did.

Basically, a combination of small sample size having large errors when extrapolating to the larger population, self-selection from being an internet poll, and response errors being treated has hard fact all culminated in an extremely small result of supposed non-citizens voting being extrapolated to an absurd extent.


Here's some additional reading from Politico about finding those problems.

Thank you for your fine efforts here to push back against rw talking points that the rw media is disseminating to give credence to the proposed gathering of data from the states to support trump's planned "study" of voter fraud, which is basically a bunch of malarkey!

[atler8]

Originally Posted by arjay57

Well, there's a lot of publicly available data that I'm not in favor of sending off to some investigative commission in Washington, D.C.

Also, this is specific to people's voting history.

Unless there's a good reason, what's the point of collecting and centralizing all this in some commission in Washington, D.C., and starting an investigation of people on the list? Who gets investigated first and why? How deep will they dig and how long will the investigation go on? Who gets the results and who decides what to do with them?

Seems like more Big Government snooping to me, with no reason being given.

Exactly!
When I read on Friday that the Georgia Secretary of State's office had agreed to go along with this trump proposal, I called the S of S office at 404)656-2881 and told them that I was outraged that the decision had so quickly & readily been made that Georgia would comply.
Pick up the phone & get involved. A short call can take just 2 short minutes, folks...

[JPD]

If the White House wants this information, and it's publicly available, let them spend their own time and resources compiling it. The last thing this country needs is lapdogs who will do whatever the president demands.

[bu2]

Originally Posted by arjay57

Yes, I read the whole article.

They verified by checking the ballots against the list of registered voters which is maintained by the county registrars.

"In Georgia, registrars are charged with adding, modifying, or removing
registrants from the voter rolls in their respective counties. Each month these
registrars receive a report from the Georgia Office of Vital Records detailing
all recorded deaths that occurred in their county from the preceding month.
In theory, any registrant who has died should be removed from the county’s
voter roll the following month. The Georgia Secretary of State also maintains a
statewide voter registration database that is synchronized with the 159 county
registration rolls. Modifications at the county level are therefore reflected on
the statewide roll and any alterations made to the state roll by the Secretary of
State’s Office will likewise be mirrored on the rolls of the county registrars.
The data for our test come from two primary sources: the voter registration
and history databases maintained by the Georgia Secretary of State and a
listing of decedents generated by the Georgia Office of Vital Records. The
state voter registration database contains a number of key data fields for
registrants, including first name, middle name, last name, name suffix, date of
birth, county of residence, race/ethnicity, sex, and voter registration number.
The copy of the voter registration database used in this study was produced
on January 17, 2007."

You don't seem to understand. They studied dead voters on the rolls-one of many ways to commit voter fraud.

They didn't study:
false registrations
double voting (for example different states using an old address)
ineligible voters (non-citizens or unregistered voters or felons)
falsely voting for someone else
manipulating actual vote counts (for example, Detroit had many precincts in 2016 with more votes than registered voters).

[bu2]

Originally Posted by fourthwarden

You and I have seen drastically different studies then. In fact, pretty much every study I've seen, and the courts and government investigations have corroborated this, have shown that voter fraud is incredibly rare and, where it does appear to happen, is often within the margin of error to be sampling, study, or accounting errors. Here is a solid collection of studies, court records, and investigations that all concluded voter fraud is extremely rare.



Possibly it's because the voter id and similar laws in the not so distant past have resulted, and been used, to restrict and suppress poor minority, and by extension generally democratic, votes.

If the laws are to be installed in good will, then it is up to those proposing them, primarily Republicans, to demonstrate that the laws will not follow recent examples. In the mean time, it shouldn't be surprising that those very proposals are resisted.



Georgia Sec. of State Brian Kemp, the same who was in place to see the state's voter information be stolen and released and who has also refused to comply with the National Voter Registration Act, was the one who made those accusations against Abrams' campaign. He claimed an unprecedented 25% of those registered qualified for fraud, without actually appearing to present any real evidence, and without even processing a massive amount of those who were freshly registered.

Instead, those very claims and inactions brought about a suite from the NAACP for suppression of votes.

It turned out that fewer than one tenth of one percent of the applications actually were suspect, and that Kemp used that incredibly small amount to launch the largest fraud investigation in the state.



Yet the data, through studies, court proceedings, and agency investigations show that fraud is not a problem today. We've already had plenty of looking into the topic, and it's all shown nothing to be suspect. This effort on the current administration's behalf is nothing more than a waste of money, a distraction from its own internal problems, and an attempt to harm democracy as a whole.

Instead, things like gerrymandering, and the very laws said to stop fraud are wielded to disenfranchise entire sections of the population.





1) Voter fraud is not a real problem, and has been shown so through plenty of study, court activity, and investigation. Recent history shows that laws to try and stop the non-existent problem, though, have been used rather effectively to suppress voters of certain demographics and political affiliations, primarily of the minority and democratic persuasions.

2) Single-payer healthcare is far more efficient, from both an operations and financial stand point than what we have in the U.S. today.

3) A well educate populace is incredibly valuable to any nation, and insulates from economic stagnation.

4) Climate change is a reality, demonstrated by measurement and observation, and confirmed by decades of theorizing, review, and restudy.

Try and get reality sorted out before you go off to lecture others on the concept of intellectual honesty.

Haven't had an opportunity to read your voter fraud studies. I did look up the New Georgia Project and possible fraud. You supplied two partisan pieces that didn't give many facts. Hard to find much on that situation that wasn't partisan. But I did find one good article.

Time for Stacey Abrams To Step Aside as Georgia Democrat Leader

So what are the actual numbers of voters registered by New Georgia Project? The total number of NGP registrants falls between about 49,300, according to Kemp, and about 86,000, according to NGP Executive Director Nse*Ufot. Two weeks after the voter registration deadline, Kemp reported more than 39,300 NGP registrants had made it onto the voter rolls, another 10,000 or so applications were pending, and almost 6,500 were deemed ineligible or invalid. That is a far cry from Abrams original goal of over 100,000 and over $3 Million in donations seems wasted for such low numbers. In fact, those numbers are no better than other years with no such big campaign or funding and less than 2010 another non-presidential election year.*

The undisputed facts are that at least 25 were proven fraudulent (from other articles) from a double digit number of counties (I saw everywhere from 11 to 15) and others were suspected. And its clear that a large number were ineligible or invalid.

[fourthwarden]

Originally Posted by bu2

Haven't had an opportunity to read your voter fraud studies. I did look up the New Georgia Project and possible fraud. You supplied two partisan pieces that didn't give many facts. Hard to find much on that situation that wasn't partisan. But I did find one good article.

Time for Stacey Abrams To Step Aside as Georgia Democrat Leader

So what are the actual numbers of voters registered by New Georgia Project? The total number of NGP registrants falls between about 49,300, according to Kemp, and about 86,000, according to NGP Executive Director Nse*Ufot. Two weeks after the voter registration deadline, Kemp reported more than 39,300 NGP registrants had made it onto the voter rolls, another 10,000 or so applications were pending, and almost 6,500 were deemed ineligible or invalid. That is a far cry from Abrams original goal of over 100,000 and over $3 Million in donations seems wasted for such low numbers. In fact, those numbers are no better than other years with no such big campaign or funding and less than 2010 another non-presidential election year.*

The undisputed facts are that at least 25 were proven fraudulent (from other articles) from a double digit number of counties (I saw everywhere from 11 to 15) and others were suspected. And its clear that a large number were ineligible or invalid.

25 out of 49,300, on the low end. That's a whopping 0.051% of voters registered as being fraudulent. Using NGP's numbers, it's down to 0.029%.

That's easily within error of review and application. So, yeah, actually, it's disputable as to how many of those were purposefully fraudulent, given that no vote for Georgia Governor is going to be decided on a 25 vote margin.

If that's really your definition of a problem, then I've got some ghosts that I could use some help exorcising.