That article has nothing to do with voter fraud. All it shows is that higher turnout seems to hurt Republicans. I won't shed any tears about the demise of a political party that relies on voter suppression to stay in office.
From the article itself:
"The Democrats are creating a new, highly efficient tool to turn out voters," said Neugebauer, the GOP consultant. "If Republicans can’t find a way to match it, we’re going to lose more elections all over the country."
There is no nastiness in preventing voter fraud either. Unless you call it voter suppression.
As for making voting easier, Republicans see it as cynically making fraud easier in the name of getting uninformed people who don't pay attention to vote for you. If you see it as Republicans see it, what the Democrats are doing is not exactly nice behavior.
The point is you need to change hundreds of thousands of votes in order for any voter fraud to impact a presidential race. There is no evidence of anything even close to that happening in this or any recent elections.
>For me I fully support having many polling places that are easy to get to for many people in multiple locations and that on election day we should make it as easy as possible for people to vote; however I also think there should be tighter integrity checks on who is voting and on the counting of votes itself.
The first half of that goes against the policies of the Republican part and Democrats aren't going to disagree with the second half.
Most studies of voter fraud have shown it's negligible. Compared to the disenfranchisement of minorities and the poor caused by requiring voter ID, I'll take that risk.
This is the same argument being wielded against Vote by Mail. Yet fraud in VBM is rare as well, and VBM works extremely well for servicemembers deployed overseas. And Trump even votes by mail...
The GOP just knows that if more people vote, the GOP candidates will do worse.
I suppose they genuinely believe easier voting brings with it massive fraud. Of course no amount of evidence will convince them otherwise - keep in mind this is the same party that just put a QAnon supporter in congress.
which if you want to go down that route I think it's important to note that many of the policies meant to protect against the specter of voter fraud in the US drastically increase the cost of voting on a segment of population that the propagating party (Republicans in this case) does not consider to be a part of their base. Sure, this could be accidental, but with the number of times it has happened in separate places with separate policies by the same party, I don't consider it particularly likely to be an accident.
The reason I bring this up is because in the current US system, I would posit that the harder it is for a person to vote, the more likely it that your vote is important given the political capital and effort expended to make sure it is hard for that person to vote. (again, this is predicated on the belief that I do not consider this phenomenon to be accidental in any way)
Given the numbers, every single election has some degree of fraud. It is not really possible to prevent 100% within our current system, and any time it's been investigated, the number of fraudulent votes has been extremely low. Moreover, there is no concerted effort by any political party to cast illegal votes.
In contrast, the Republican party is loudly all-in on gerrymandering and other disenfranchising rat-fuckery.
Race and voting demographics show Democrats have an edge nationwide that will continue to grow over the next decade and on. Republicans know this and this is why they hit mid-terms so hard. General voting is down and it’s easier to win. Add suppression methods, including psychographic warfare and they know they have a shot to rig the system.
This why Trump won and why our Supreme Court is going to take away the rights of workers, minorities, women, and immigrants.
Reminder that in America high voter turnout almost always favors Democrats, and the Republicans are very good at gerrymandering and taking control of state governments.
They use this power to restrict voting rather than make it easier, mainly in the name of combating voter fraud, which statistically doesn't actually occur in the first place.
OK, but even if you disregard voter ID (others have explained that issue well here already) the Republican party has engaged in a large number of other methods to supress votes. Fighting to overturn parts of the voting rights act , Gerrymandering, reducing polling places in cities with demographics that tend to vote for Democrats, removing early voting days and fighting against vote by mail (methods favored by Democrat leaning demographics), and the list goes on.
The Democrats have engaged in many of these same methods in the past btw, but today's GOP have taken it to the next level. So far that I question if many Republican leaders believe in democracy at all anymore.
I really wonder how good faith conservatives can view these actions positively. One side tries to make it easier, safer, and quicker to vote. One side is trying the opposite.
The only explanation they can come up with is voter fraud which has not been found to be a widescale problem by nearly every group that has looked into it.
“Voter fraud” is just a pretext. It happens at negligible rates whereëver it's been studied, and Republican legislators have actually been caught red-handed conspiring against likely-Democrat demographics, it's not just speculation.
Making it easier for people to vote (and make sure their vote is counted correctly, as is the overwhelming primary use case in "curing") is not fraud, it's democracy. The fact that one party is (and historically has been) opposed to this is not something to be proud of.
Voter fraud is someone who shouldn't be voting but votes. It's basically nonexistent. This is election fraud--people who are allowed to vote being blocked in some fashion. It's definitely up there in the Republican playbook.
Note that the Republican obsession with voter fraud is actually an attempt to justify election fraud.
You are the first person to engage me with intellectual honesty, so thank you.
I don’t care who commits the fraud. I want my vote to count as it should. So that’s a why I believe we should be vigilant about mail in voter fraud.
Your Native American example is an example of a corner case that should be addressed properly. Indeed it is unfair if there were no other ways for Native Americans to vote (surely they could vote in person? If not, I’d classify that as a violation of rights). But this doesn’t extend generally, not does it nullify general mail vote fraud concerns.
And I would add more evidence under the claim ‘majority of fraud committed by Republicans’ in order to be more convincing.
It's got nothing to do with voter fraud which is another conspiracy tagline for his base to hang their propaganda on. His whole intent is to make it harder to vote and reduce voting % as much as possible in order to amplify his rabid base votes who will move heaven and earth to vote and keep their racist dear leader in power.
This isn't news to anyone, he's openly said Republicans would never be elected again if it was easier to vote.
They don’t care about voter fraud. At all.
They care about adding enough shit together that they can win elections.
That is all they care about.
It is not in good faith. It is not about protecting the sanctity of elections.
It is about the opposite. They’ve never been able to show that voter fraud has ever affected an election.
They’re in it because even shaving a percentage of people from voting Democrat is worth it for them.
That is it. That’s the only reason.
Goodbye.
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