[Tfug] A really, really interesting job opportunity...

[Jim March]

Quoting Ken Smith:

>>Let's stay on track.  Please educate me on how requiring an ID at the
polls adversely effects anyone.<<

I'll be honest, I'm torn on this issue and don't really know which side to
support.  Here are the arguments from each side, as they would be stated by
somebody honestly believing what they're saying.

DEMOCRATIC PARTY POV:

Lower income and minority people are more likely to not have their
paperwork in order.  Simple as that.  Elderly voters are another factor,
and women are less likely to have paperwork in order because they usually
change their names after getting married.  Another block of voters affected
is students who move into the state to go to school and based on court
rulings are allowed to vote here...but due to the recent move, they may not
have their paperwork locked down tight at the time of voting.

If it's not obvious yet: the female, student and minority voting blocks all
tend to lean Democratic.  So any suppression of that vote, to even a small
degree (5%?) can be enough to swing elections in a Republican direction.

Here in Pima County the issue is particularly severe out on the Tohono
O'Odham and Pascua Yaqui nations, where some of the older folks *never* got
their paperwork 100% straight as they tried as hard as they could to have
more or less nothing to do with white culture.  For understandable
reasons...fr'instance, the last organized hunt for stray Apaches happened
in the 1930s close to Tucson (and the Tohono O'Ohdam helped hunt the
Apaches in one version of the story I've heard).

So, from this point of view, every time you tighten "voter ID" laws you're
suppressing the Dem vote more than the GOP.

REPUBLICAN POV:

There really is some level of "voter fraud" going on.  To what degree is
unclear.

Part of what's muddying the waters is the trend to do paid voter
registration drives among minority, student and lower-income voting
blocks.  Groups like Acorn and various Unions pay bounties to people to get
new Democrats signed up.  They're supposed to go out and get new signatures
from real new voters (or convince people to switch parties) for between $5
and $8 q head, typically.  Inevitably, some of those signature gatherers
get greedy and start creating new voter reg forms with either made-up names
or pick names and addresses out of a phone book...just to get paid.

Proof of this sort of thing turns up all the time.  It really happens, for
some value of "a lot".  The question is, is there a second step?  Does
somebody connected with Acorn or the like actually know who the new fake
voters are so they can actually vote their ballots?  THAT is a lot harder
to define.  To some extent, yeah, it happens.  I have no idea how often.

The other question is, are individuals doing vote fraud?  Illegal aliens
signing up to vote, citizens voting multiple times (in one jurisdiction or
multiple)?  Again: yeah, it does happen.  I just don't know the amount of
it and neither does anybody else.

JIM'S POV:

Look...what we have here is claims of "retail voter fraud" balanced by
claims that trying to eliminate it acts as an overall vote suppression
factor.

Here's what I know: to successfully rig an election with "retail vote
fraud" requires a large number of attackers acting in concert.  To
successfully rig an election by rigging the central tabulator requires an
attack team size as low as TWO.  Sometimes just one.  You rig the MS-Access
database or the like at the central tabulator.  If you're really doing it
right, you also take the .PS or .PDF ballot definition files off the same
box, take them to your garage at home or wherever else you've stashed a
good modern $5000+ laser printer that can print new blank ballots and you
literally create fake ballots to match the electronic vote rigging you
did.  And then do a paper swap.  Your attack team size is still very small.

That's what I focus my attention on, as I think it's the more dangerous
possibility.  This has me allied with Dems more often than Repubs, despite
that whole "I don't leave home without a 357" thing :).

Sigh.

Jim
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