Actual election fraud

[Theophylact]

needn't involve voting as someone else:

Four staffers of former U.S. Rep. Thad McCotter, R-Livonia were charged today in connection with the false nominating petitions that led to McCotter's departure from Congress.

Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette described the four as "not simply Keystone Kops running amok ... criminal acts were committed."

He said the petition forgeries and cut-and-paste jobs on the petitions "would make an elementary art teacher cringe."

Schuette said the McCotter staffers also likely did the same thing in the 2008 elections, using 2006 petition signatures.

• Don Yowchuang 33, of Farmington Hills, the deputy district director, was charged with 10 counts of election law forgery, a five-year felony; one count of conspiracy to commit a legal act in an illegal manner, a 5-year felony, and six counts of falsely signing a nominating petition, all misdemeanors.

• Paul Seewald, 47, of Livonia, the district director, was charged with one count of conspiracy to commit a legal act in an illegal manner, nine counts of falsely signing a nominating petition.

• Mary Melissa Turnbull, 58, of Howell, district representative, was charged with one count of conspiracy to commit a legal act in an illegal manner and one count of falsely signing a nominating petition.

• Lorianne O'Brady, former scheduler, 52, of Livonia was charged with five counts of falsely signing a nominating petition.

"Let me tell you this, we find any other evidence, we'll review it in the same painstaking ... thorough fashion," Schuette said at a late-morning news conference.

Schuette blasted McCotter for being "asleep at the switch," and providing no guidance to his staffers.

"They acted above the law as if it didn't apply to them," Schuette said.

But there is no specific evidence that McCotter was involved in the petition fraud, so the former congressman, who resigned in July, was not charged.

"Their motive is immaterial," Schuette said. "They set a standard of conduct that is disgraceful."

McCotter this afternoon released a statement saying, "I thank the Attorney General and his office for their earnest, thorough work on this investigation, which I requested, and their subsequent report."

According to the investigator's report obtained by the Free Press, the four were a “dysfunctional congressional staff that had completely lost its moral compass” and were “indifferent to the requirements of the law.”

All four worked in McCotter’s Livonia office. They are Yowchuang, district deputy director, Seewald, the district director, O’Brady, a scheduler, and Turnbull, a district representative. The investigation revealed that they forged petitions, cut and pasted signatures from other petitions, and had individuals falsely signed as petition circulators.

Most of the illegal acts occurred at McCotter’s district office the day before the deadline for turning in petitions. They needed at least 1,000 valid signatures and turned in more than 1,800. All but a few hundred were found invalid by the Secretary of State’s office.

Yowchuang was the most deeply involved of the four staffers and was linked in the report to 17 separate counts of wrongdoing.

The investigators interviewed 75 people and seized 725 documents for their probe involving 136 nominating petitions.

McCotter – briefly presidential candidate in a long shot, hard-to-explain bid a year ago -- was considered a shoo-in to win his sixth two-year term in the 11th Congressional District this year, especially since it was redrawn as more friendly territory for a Republican candidate.

But then, in May, news broke that McCotter’s campaign had submitted false and fraudulent petition signatures to the Secretary of State’s Office in support of his re-election. Officials said the vast majority of the 1,830 signatures delivered were duplicated, some with the dates changed.

An investigation was launched by the Attorney General’s Office, with McCotter pledging his cooperation.

It was a campaign mistake that might be committed by an untested candidate, but no one in Washington or Lansing could remember it happening to an incumbent congressman, so routine is the collection of petition signatures.

McCotter’s name was left off the ballot, and, as local Republican leaders fumed, in June he dropped the idea of even running a write-in campaign in the Republican primary.

At first resolving to leave Congress at the end of term, McCotter last month abruptly announced his resignation from office, saying he and his family had suffered a “nightmarish month and a half.”

It forced the governor to call a special primary on Sept. 5 that is expected to cost $650,000 and two elections in November – one to fill out what by then will be no more than several weeks remaining in McCotter’s unfinished term.

McCotter often cut a strange figure on Capitol Hill. Lanky, sardonic and sometimes standoffish in comparison to more gregarious, backslapping politicians, he spoke in a deep voice and played guitar in rock bands. Once a rising star in the party who chaired the House Republican Policy Committee, he was at ease quoting conservative economic thinkers and Led Zeppelin or the Rolling Stones alike.

Voter photo ID would have done nothing to prevent this fraud.

[Chuckiechan]

Vote fraud is real;Michael Walsh - NYPOST.com

Michael A. Walsh

The vote of one idiot can cancel out the vote of a single genius — such is the glory of our one-man, one-vote system. But what about the vote of an illegal alien? The deceased? Or a convicted felon? Should they be allowed to spoil the electoral process — and perhaps change history?

And why — in the name of “civil rights” — is Attorney General Eric Holder using the power of the Justice Department to hamstring states trying to put a stop to voter fraud by requiring a secure ID in order to vote?

The answer is clear: In an election that promises to be every bit as close as Bush v. Gore in 2000, each side is going to need every vote it can get. And one way, historically, that Democrats have been able to swing close elections is through fraud. Consider:

* In the 2004 Washington state governor’s race, the Republican’s early lead was overcome by the miraculous discovery of previously uncounted ballots squirreled away in the Democratic stronghold of Seattle, handing the election to the Democrat.

* In the close governor’s race in Connecticut in 2010, a mysterious shortage of ballots in Bridgeport kept the polls open an extra two hours as allegedly blank ballots were photocopied and handed out in the heavily Democratic city. Dannel Malloy defeated Republican Tom Foley by nearly 7,000 votes statewide — but by almost 14,000 votes in Bridgeport.

* Now a new book — “Who’s Counting?” by John Fund and Hans von Spakovsky — charges that Al Franken’s 2008 defeat of incumbent Republican Sen. Norm Coleman may be directly attributable to felons voting illegally.

Coleman led on election night, but a series of recounts lasting eight months eventually gave the seat to the former Saturday Night Live star.

Later, a conservative watchdog group matched criminal records with the voting rolls and discovered that 1,099 felons had illegally cast ballots. State law mandates prosecutions in such cases; 177 have been convicted so far, with 66 more awaiting trial.

Franken’s eventual margin of “victory”? A mere 312 votes.

The Minnesota win gave the Democrats their 60th Senate seat, creating the filibuster-proof majority that helped shovel ObamaCare into law.

Democrats’ chicanery extends back to the days of Tammany Hall and other big-city machines. But today, much of the dirty work is done by lawyers. So maybe it’s not so surprising that Holder is either “investigating” or actually suing states like South Carolina, Texas, Florida and Pennsylvania that have instituted tougher new requirements, including the presentation of government-issued ID.

Never mind that the Supreme Court by a 6-3 vote has already upheld the constitutionality of requiring valid identification in a 2008 case in Indiana.

Holder, the most politicized attorney general since Nixon’s John Mitchell, has consistently moved against any efforts to protect the integrity of the ballot box in the service of the party that keeps him employed.

Infamously, he dropped prosecution of members of the New Black Panther Party, who were intimidating white voters outside a Philadelphia polling place during the 2008 presidential election.

And he killed the case despite the urging of lawyers at Justice and members of the US Civil Rights Commission, which in a 2010 report accused Justice of “open hostility and opposition” to prosecuting cases with white victims.

In a speech last month to the NAACP, the AG charged that Republican efforts to ensure the integrity of the electoral process effectively amount to “voter suppression,” under the absurd premise that minorities are incapable of obtaining proper ID.

Risibly, Holder likened the tougher ID requirements to the days of Jim Crow and the poll tax — despite the fact that, in Pennsylvania for example, the state provides photo IDs free of charge.

Studies show that the cemetery, illegal-immigrant and felon votes tends to break heavily Democratic. Just ask Norm Coleman, who would have blocked ObamaCare and kept circus clown Al Franken away from Washington.

[Theophylact]

“There is no basis in fact, whatsoever, in these inaccuracies propagated by the Minnesota Majority here, none,” Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman said Wednesday. “After the most closely scrutinized election in Minnesota history in 2008, there were zero cases of fraud. Even the Republicans lawyers acknowledged that there was no systematic effort to defraud the election, none.”

“In Hennepin County, 650,000 people voted,” he continued. “The Minnesota Majority presented us with 1,500 cases that they felt there were problems with voting. Our own election bureau gave us 100. At the end of the day, we charged 38 cases. And all but one of them are felons voting who were still under the penalty [of not legally applying to regain individual voting rights]. There was no fraud.”

[sharder8]

At the end of the day, we charged 38 cases. And all but one of them are felons voting who were still under the penalty [of not legally applying to regain individual voting rights]. There was no fraud.”

38 cases charged . . . but there was no fraud????

That's like saying the Colorado gunman fired the shots, but won't be charged with killing anyone.


Boy, can people spin the chit in politics.


Harder

[tony_j15]

650,000 voters. 38 bad votes which were thrown out. Throwing them out means they don't count. Not having bad votes in the final tally means the count is not tainted. If it's not tainted, it is not fraudulent. Ergo, there was no fraud.

There's the logic, FWIW.