Millions of minority voters threatened by electoral purge

Election officials in 27 states, most of them Republicans, have launched a program that threatens a massive purge of voters from the rolls. Millions, especially black, Hispanic and Asian-American voters, are at risk. Already, tens of thousands have been removed in at least one battleground state, and the numbers are expected to climb, according to a six-month-long, nationwide investigation by Al Jazeera America.

At the heart of this voter-roll scrub is the Interstate Crosscheck program, which has generated a master list of nearly 7 million names. Officials say that these names represent legions of fraudsters who are not only registered but have actually voted in two or more states in the same election — a felony punishable by 2 to 10 years in prison.

Until now, state elections officials have refused to turn over their Crosscheck lists, some on grounds that these voters are subject to criminal investigation. Now, for the first time, three states — Georgia, Virginia and Washington — have released their lists to Al Jazeera America, providing a total of just over 2 million names.

The Crosscheck list of suspected double voters has been compiled by matching names from roughly 110 million voter records from participating states. Interstate Crosscheck is the pet project of Kansas’ controversial Republican secretary of state, Kris Kobach, known for his crusade against voter fraud.

The three states’ lists are heavily weighted with names such as Jackson, Garcia, Patel and Kim — ones common among minorities, who vote overwhelmingly Democratic. Indeed, fully 1 in 7 African-Americans in those 27 states, plus the state of Washington (which enrolled in Crosscheck but has decided not to utilize the results), are listed as under suspicion of having voted twice. This also applies to 1 in 8 Asian-Americans and 1 in 8 Hispanic voters. White voters too — 1 in 11 — are at risk of having their names scrubbed from the voter rolls, though not as vulnerable as minorities.

If even a fraction of those names are blocked from voting or purged from voter rolls, it could alter the outcome of next week’s electoral battle for control of the U.S. Senate — and perhaps prove decisive in the 2016 presidential vote count.

“It’s Jim Crow all over again,” says the Rev. Joseph Lowery, who cofounded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with Martin Luther King, Jr. Lowery, now 93, says he recognizes in the list of threatened voters a sophisticated new form of an old and tired tactic. “I think [the Republicans] would use anything they can find. Their desperation is rising.”

....

"That was the sales pitch. But the actual lists show that not only are middle names commonly mismatched and suffix discrepancies ignored, even birthdates don’t seem to have been taken into account. Moreover, Crosscheck deliberately ignores Social Security mismatches, in the few instances when the numbers are even collected. The Crosscheck instructions for county election officers state, “Social Security numbers are included for verification; the numbers might or might not match.”

Link and more here

what in the ****. How is this even legal?

Explain to me again how the US is in the forefront of Democracy?

And while you're at it, The Democratic value of the two party system?

The only things that are illegal are the things you are not allowed to get away with. Republicans are simply trying to see if this will end up being illegal. If not it's great for them and they know it.

If the same Social Security No. shows up with the same name across multiple states? I'd say the likelihood of fraud is pretty good.

As much as I love railing on Republicans, 7 of those states are Democrat-controlled. The Democrats aren't exactly free of blame here. They are the ones battling this stuff in court, though.

Were they signed into law in those seven states?

They are participating in the program so I assume so. No idea if it was implemented when a Republican was in office, though. Still even if they didn't pass it themselves I think it's fair game to criticize them - Obama gets tons of shit for extending/not repealing a lot of Dubya's bad policies.

Fair enough.

Yes.

I think the word you're looking for is oligarchy. ;)

Yeah, sadly this country -- once the forerunner for democracy -- is now only a democracy in appearance, not in reality.

But if you guys had actually read it it said that SSN "mismatches are deliberately ignored by CrossCheck". So there is a problem with this system when it intentionally ignores proof that would show people aren't committing fraud.

And so it goes on

Funny how any attempt to stop voter fraud is dismissed as racist attempts by Republicans to suppress the votes of Democrats. Fact of the matter is voter fraud, no matter how small has no place in this country.

Millions threatened? I doubt even 10 will be tried and arrested. It should say 10 people are threatened with electoral purge. If there are people who are actually found guilty of voter fraud then they absolutely should be tried and punished. Fraud is fraud and should be treated accordingly. Meanwhile pretty much everyone who wants to vote will continue to vote.

I like how it's so easy to tell who didn't actually read the OP. If you don't read it, why bother posting?

Love the rampant focus on fighting voter fraud and how shit like this keeps coming up even though there has been no statistical evidence of voter fraud being any sort of issue...

we must eliminate this voter fraud! and when we say voter fraud we mean brown people that don't vote for us.

yeah, those 31 fraudulent ballots out of one billion votes cast is a huge problem.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/08/06/a-comprehensive-investigation-of-voter-impersonation-finds-31-credible-incidents-out-of-one-billion-ballots-cast/

Did I say anywhere in my post that voter fraud is a huge problem? I just said that fraud, no matter how small, needs to be stopped. You shouldn't assume that the only reason they are doing this is because they are a bunch of racists who are trying to silence voters that don't vote Republican.

But if you have your mind made up nothing I say will change that. Either way, if Democrats don't do well next month it'll have a lot more to do with the low approval ratings Congress and the President have than racist Republicans using some voter suppression scheme to silence black and Hispanic voters.

@ad1x2: you know what else has no place in this country? Stopping millions of people from voting because you don't like the people who they normally vote for.

lol

You didn't read the OP did you? If you did, you must be batshit insane to defend these kind of tactics.

That's why I think the only genuine cases of voter fraud would be those where the SSN matches the name at different locations. Ignoring the non-matches makes the whole practice very flawed.

If it's really about voter fraud, it shouldn't matter how painstakingly tedious the work would be.

I agree.

We already know this is about Republicans suppressing the vote and not about voter integrity, anybody arguing it's about voter integrity is just playing stupid.

in the end i don't care what happens to either of these groups of corrupt little toads who are more interested in personal power and keeping their late night visits to interstate rest areas a secret than the will of the people but anyone who denies this is anything but voter suppression is delusional.

It isn't. Quite the opposite, hierarchy within the US have utter contempt for democracy and for the majority of those who have the nerve to vote in their own interests. The US have is an awesome PR industry. So they can posture themselves in any way they like to the world and those who don't know any better will fall for their shtick,

the negative effects of the measures are not proportionate to whatever benefit received by them

The republican party hates minorities.

Especially blacks and Mexicans.

This isn't new

I've mentioned to you in multiple threads that the average number of fraudulent votes in national elections each year is about 10 and that it would stop millions from voting and cost millions. Republicans are always whining about the government wasting money, but they are willing to spend millions to stop millions of people from voting every year knowing these facts.

It's blatant racism, and anybody with half a brain can see it.

It's the "Better send 1000 innocent people to jail then let one guilty man go" mentality.

The numbers don't exactly make sense and you not getting this every time this thread is made, (seriously, I've seen you post in like 10 of these and you aren't getting it) says a lot about your intelligence or that you're possibly racist.

I'm curious though, wouldn't this effect white voters whose names match in these searches just the same? Or are Republicans in office making these lists then cherry picking names on the list that might indicate a likely liberal bias based on the ethnic/racial qualities of the names, or registered party affiliation?

@MakeMeaSammitch: This might surprise you, but I'm not white. In fact, if I go to the neighborhood I grew up in I might get called an Uncle Tom because I chose to join the military rather than do what a lot of other people decided to do to make a living, some of which included illegal activities. So if you think I'm some racist who wants to silence black and Hispanic voters you are mistaken.

What you probably don't understand about my posts is while I'm not really pushing for stricter voter laws (I'm well aware it is unlikely thousands of illegal immigrants are voting Democrat like some people in the Republican party claim) I'm not against any effort to stop it either. Yes, I understand that there are some racist people out there who would love to eliminate people who vote for Democrats. But that doesn't mean every single person who pushes for more strict voter regs is some racist.

I will admit that the underlined in the first post, if accurate, is disturbing if they are blatantly ignoring SSN and birthday mismatches.

First, racism is racism regardless of the color. So yes, you can be racist toward your own. The whole "I'm black so I can't possibly..." I mean, that excuse wouldn't hold in any other scenario, I'm not sure why it would be valid here.

Secondly, any practice that disproportionately discriminates against a racial group is racist by definition. If a reasonable and sane person plans to continue an endeavor fully aware that his actions will lead to the racial discrimination of an ethnic populace, then it is his intent to engage in a racist act.. His motives for engaging in such an act, on the other hand, may or may not be bigoted and frankly, it matters not if it is or isn't. In the voting scenario, a state could take part in a scheme of disenfranchising Black voters simply to further empower the Republican party. If they could, that same state would probably do the same to Jewish voters as well - again, to further republican power. If they were to disenfranchise the Jewish vote, that would very much be anti-Jewish, true motives notwithstanding.

Illegal aliens are being told where and how to vote by LaRaza. The whole immigration push by Obama is to get the Latino vote to destroy the Republican Party. The Chamber of Commerce want immigration reform to get cheap labor and keep wages down Obama plans to institute immigration reform after the election when that happens the United States will no longer be the nation it once was. You young folks and future generations are all going to be screwed.

@thebest31406: You're right, it was a very poor example mentioning my race as a reason why I'm not racist against black people. I saw and experienced it first hand in school with one example being dark skinned black kids insulting and bullying light skinned black kids. But at the same time that doesn't mean I'm some self-hating black man.

The point I was trying to say is in my opinion it goes into tin-foil hat territory to claim that any proposal to stop voter fraud is a thinly-veiled attempt to suppress nonwhite votes because of the opinion that only racist white people vote Republican. To me, it's not much different than the other tin-foil hat theory that the only reason Democrats want to allow voter fraud to continue is because they are counting on the votes of millions of illegal immigrants to keep them in office.

They like immigrants from the Philippines probably because they're devout Catholics and likely to be conservative. I recall my wife's brother getting nowhere with immigrating here during Clinton's time. Then during Bush Jr's time, my brother in law gave it another try and got approved. And it's not just him, but his whole family as well.

Both parties play that game.

Politics hurt my mind!

No kidding. My wife isn't white. But, she's far more likely to vote Republican than I am.

@JimB: If all that were true wouldn't Obama have tried to implement immigration reform via executive order before the election? You know, so he could get the votes?

Your wife sure does speak for every non-white American...

Anyways regardless of actual intent, nobody can justify potentially disenfranchising millions of voters to help fight against the what, 10 cases of voter fraud per election.

You're the one making that assumption, not me. If I say she represents non-white Americans, then I'd say so. As it was, I never said any such thing.

The National Council of La Raza is telling people without ID where they can vote in Washington DC, a very populous area for blacks I might add who are said to be effected by these new ID requirements throughout the nation, and in the District of Columbia they make up over half the population. And that's not all La Raza is doing, they're participating in other get out the vote efforts including registering people to vote. What's so inherently wrong about telling eligible voters how they can take part in the democratic process and assisting them in the process? Fringe Republicans like yourself infer that because The National Council of La Raza is a Mexican-American interest group that they have an army of illegal aliens at their disposal. That's racist and paranoid on such a high level. It's more telling that Republicans just assume all Latinos/Hispanics are illegal aliens and criminals. What you're saying is a point that's not that's been humored in the slightest in any national media, just your run on the mill fringe fear mongering right wing circle jerk media that are accountable to nobody, that use each others' conjecture for sources and escalate the claim each time they do so. And why do you assume as the racial make-up of the country changes that whites are inherently screwed?

lmao

It's not a tin-foil hat theory m8, they've straight up admitted to it plenty of times: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/08/28/republicans-admit-voter-id-laws-are-aimed-at-democratic-voters.html

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/10/25/2835101/gop-asks-party-official-resign-admits-voter-suppresses-democratic-votes/

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/news/state-regional-govt-politics/early-voting-curbs-called-power-play/nTFDy/

There's more if you just look for it.

Yes, but I don't believe people know their vote isn't being counted. So how could they attempt to stop it?

@ad1x2: voter fraud may have no place in this country no matter how small, but there are costs to addressing it. The question is are the costs worth it. It's like fighting pollution or mandating automobile safety features, sure we all would want no pollution and completely safe cars and roads, but we have to factor in the costs to achieve those things.

It's why we don't all drive tanks to work. Why we don't all just switch over to green friendly alternatives.

I'm all for coming up with ways to address voter fraud if the benefits outweigh the costs.

I don't know what you being whatever color has to do with this. Wrong time to play the race card I guess.

What I'm saying is that time and time again these programs have been shown to both be anti minority in nature and cost millions of dollars while not stopping any significant number (10) each year. You stated in a previous post that we need to be doing what we can to stop voter fraud, and even if you're reneging now and saying you're neutral on it, you're still in the wrong.

When it comes to making decisions on politically debatable issues you need to weigh the pros and cons of an issue and it's pretty blatant that stopping millions of voting and costing states 10s of millions of dollars vs. stopping 10 people a year is pretty easy to form the correct opinion on.

On the racist thing I'd say that there are three possibilities for people that support voter registration laws: The uninformed (stupid), people trying to suppress the democratic vote, and racists.

Which are you?

voter id laws are a solution in search of a problem

voter fraud has never even come remotely close to swinging an election in this country

Dude it's pretty blatant when the majority of people be suppressed are minority that they are specifically targeting a group

The math doesn't make sense; stopping millions of votes to stop 10 a year.

Put a little bit of thought into this and read between the lines.