Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund will be coming to UNC next Tuesday, October 26th. He’ll be speaking about the threat voter fraud poses to our democracy, whether or not it happened in a significant way in the 2008 election, and whether it’ll happen again in 2010 despite the demise of groups like ACORN.
Please join us in Bingham Hall room 103 from 5:30 to 6:20PM.
John Fund writes the weekly “On the Trail” column for OpinionJournal.com. He is author of “Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy” (Encounter, 2004).
Mr. Fund joined the Journal in April 1984 as deputy editorial features editor. He became an editorial page writer specializing in politics and government in October 1986 and was a member of the Journal’s editorial board from 1995 through 2001.
Mr. Fund worked as a research analyst for the California State Legislature in Sacramento before beginning his journalism career in 1982 as a reporter for the syndicated columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak. In 1993, he received the Warren Brookes Award for journalistic excellence from the American Legislative Exchange Council.
He and former Pennsylvania Rep. James K. Coyne are co-authors of the book “Cleaning House: America’s Campaign for Term Limits” (Regnery Gateway, 1992). Mr. Fund attended California State University where he studied journalism and economics.
Like many other Republicans, Fund is hyping the non-existent threat of voter fraud in order to justify GOP efforts to suppress minority voter turnout.
Bollocks. http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/191411/voter…
It's somewhat ironic that you would point to Spakovsky here, since he's a prominent advocate of a variety of GOP strategies for reducing the number of people who can vote, as well as a prominent advocate of a variety of GOP conspiracy theories regarding non-existent vote fraud by poor and minority voters.
The GOP definitely doesn't try to "suppress minority voter turnout." Sounds like a crazy conspiracy theory to me.
Sounds like you don't know what you're talking about, as usual.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A74…http://blogs.chron.com/txpotomac/2010/10/gop_hisp…
Sounds like you think everything you read on the interwebs in true in its original form.
Not sure what you mean, but yes, I believe it's true (as reported) that the GOP has engaged in systematic voter suppression efforts, not least as indicated in the consent decree from 1982. Maybe you live in some alternate universe where that didn't happen? The fact is that there is scant evidence of systematic voter fraud, while there is considerable evidence of voter suppression, from the Jim Crow era to the present. I lived in Durham in 1990, when the Helms campaign blanketed black neighborhoods with mailings threatening the arrest of anyone found to be voting without proper registration — a classic case of attempting to suppress voter turnout.
From the court opinion denying the RNC's effort last year to vacate the consent decree: "Voter intimidation presents an ongoing threat to the participation of minority individuals in the political process, and continues to pose a far greater danger to the integrity of that process than the type of voter fraud the RNC is prevented from addressing by the Decree."
What do you think is the purpose for this GOP-coordinated effort to stir up fears of "epidemic vote fraud," when there's no evidence of such a thing? Do you feel comfortable being a part of this GOP-coordinated effort to portray US elections as corrupted by the participation of minorities and poor people?
Uh, I'm pretty sure that it's the Right that wants to make sure everyone's votes actually count. Hence the concern over potential fraud.
But there's such scant evidence of vote fraud, so why is the GOP putting so much energy into hyping this conspiracy theory as a massive threat, while simultaneously trying to force many registered voters to be removed from the rolls, and mobilizing volunteers to intimidate voters at the polls in minority neighborhoods? It's impossibly naive of you to think that all of this has to do with "making sure everyone's vote counts," when the GOP has such a long, documented history of engaging in a variety of tactics to suppress voter turnout, from the Jim Crow era to the present.
For example: I lived in Durham in 1990, when the Helms campaign sent 100,000 postcards to black voters in Durham and other parts of the state, with false information threatening the arrest and prosecution of anyone who voted illegally. Do you think that was just an effort to make sure everyone's vote counted? U.S. v. Jesse Helms for Senate Committee found that the language in the postcards was intentionally misleading, designed to frighten and intimidate recipients and prevent them from voting.
Hmm, we've seen that kind of stupid stuff around…
NRO blogger Thomas Shakely: "At issue is a letter sent to voters across the district from a fictitious “Voter Assistance Office,” underwritten by the Pennsylvania Democratic Party, which instructed voters to return an absentee ballot to a private post office box controlled by Patrick Murphy’s campaign manager, warning recipients that their ability to participate in the election would be at risk if they did not do so."
I agree that's inexcusable and probably illegal, but it doesn't change the fact that historically, voter suppression has been the almost exclusive province of the GOP; and that voter fraud is practically nonexistent, in spite of coordinated GOP efforts to convince people otherwise.