sir_eccles

and reducing early voting in certain neighborhoods and requiring onerous ID laws and striking people off the register and blocking registration efforts and...

Giantaxe

Indeed... all the opposite of the claim of "stuffing the ballot box".

FlaviusAetius

Voter fraud is extremely difficult to prove, unless the fraudster stupidly boasts about voting 8 times, as happened in Cleveland in the last general election.

But a "tiny" bit of voter fraud could swing an important election. Consider the Coleman/Franken election in 2008. Franken won by 312 votes out of 2.9 million cast. There is concern with the fact that over a thousand ineligible felons voted and they might have (who knows, how would you prove it?) put Franken over the top. He then provided the 60th vote needed to pass Obamacare out of the Senate and to the President for signature into law.

So even tiny, teeny bit of fraud in one state could affect everyone in the country. Wouldn't we all feel a little better having at least some tenuous reason to believe that our precious franchise wasn't being annulled by voter fraud?

As for gerrymandering, it's in the open and the aggrieved party has access to the court system to correct egregious redistricting plans - and they have, and the courts have.

Michael

But disenfranchising a large percentage of the population doesn't swing the votes the other way like these republicans claim?

5 Republicans Who Are Getting Honest About Voter ID Laws | Care2 Causes

Giantaxe

"There is a concern".... them's weasely words. Predictably, it looks like this voter fraud didn't actually happen in the thousands anyway:

And bear in mind that these are people charged, not actually convicted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United...innesota,_2008

I'd say the onus is on the folks screaming "our precious franchise is being annulled by voter fraud" to produce the evidence, especially when the "solution" seems to be to disenfranchise way more people. So how many people were convicted of voter fraud in the '08 Franken election?

All I have to do is look at a map to see the process in many states is broken.

RoadWarriorFromLP

This is consistent with the American right's current MO: rail against a problem that does not exist, only to provide an alternative that is far worse than anything that they had imagined.

The lapdogs eat this stuff up. What the Republican leadership really wants is to reduce turnout, as they are quite aware that higher turnout favors the Democrats. Any excuse will do.

FlaviusAetius

It really doesn't matter. Once the new arrivals from south of the border get the vote, even massive voter fraud will be completely unnecessary for the left to win every single election in the future by a landslide. That should make you and Giantaxe as happy as a tornado in a trailer park.

Giantaxe

Oh so now it's "massive voter fraud"..... evidence?

sir_eccles

Lindsey Graham appears to be performing an interesting form of political suicide:

Lindsey Graham’s Charleston-Response Dumpster Fire Just Got Hotter | Vanity Fair

RoadWarriorFromLP

Conservatives in the US don't need evidence. Dog whistles will suffice.

FlaviusAetius

Man, you and the RoadWarrior need to lighten up...it's hard to have any fun around here. Stop pretending to be a couple of grumpy old Bolsheviks and share your joy at the inevitable, impending victory of the Left with the rest of us.

RoadWarriorFromLP

Aside from your (and by extension, Fox News') imagination, where exactly is this Left?

FlaviusAetius

Sigh...evidently you need to watch something other than MSNBC for news. Bernie, an avowed Socialist, is pulling Hillary way to the Left, and even the Fox News Poll shows she is beating every one of the Republican Dwarfs who have announced, or hinted that they might announce, a run for the presidency.

The problem is you and the Giantaxe won't ever admit that even Bernie Sanders is to the left of Cameron. With that distorted world view, of course what you see around you is nothing but a fascist Amerikan dictatorship spouting nonsense about "American Exceptionalism" to cloak its evil reality of rascism, homophobia, and oppression of the masses who need to rise up and destroy the bourgeoisie because they have nothing to lose but their chains and a world to gain.

Oakvillian

I have no dog in this fight, so to speak, so the whistles won't affect me... but our Roman friend raises an intriguing point. Why is it inevitable that immigration over the southern border allows "the left to win every single election in the future"? Is it, possibly, because the GOP does not espouse policies that speak to newly minted Americans, particularly the unskilled labouring classes? Could it be that Republicans would be better served by actually formulating a policy position that addresses the needs of all of society, rather than wailing and gnashing their teeth and moving ever further to the right? Or would that too squarely put the blame for any future defeat on the party itself, rather than having a convenient inbuilt scapegoat in "immigrants" that supports the status quo and comforts the hawkish, xenophobic, anti-immigrant (and maybe also a little bit racist) core of the party's voter base?

zargof

They could do that, but then they would lose their current base.