Jim Geraghty was very unhappy with a post I wrote last week questioning his focus on voter fraud and his relative lack of concern over states purging voters from the rolls. I argued that Geraghty couldn't point out a single instance of organized voter fraud. When Geraghty tried to, he ran into some trouble, before asserting that ACORN's turning in bad registration forms were proof of a conspiracy to commit registration fraud.
Hey, guess who was out registering voters in this district before the primary? Aw, you saw this coming - ACORN. The same group running into legal troubles in thirteen other states. When you see the same issues coming up with the same group in fourteen different instances, how much more evidence do you need before you conclude that this is "organized voter fraud"?Well for one thing, I'd need Jim Geraghty to learn the difference between voter fraud and registration fraud. But if we were trying to figure out if ACORN had conspired to commit registration fraud, I would be interested in discovering a compelling incentive for them to do so. The incentive for registration workers to turn in fraudulent forms is obvious -- they do it so they get paid for work they don't do. The incentive for ACORN to tell its workers to commit registration fraud is less clear. ACORN compelled by law in many states to turn in bad forms, no matter how blatantly fraudulent, they can't affect the outcome of the election by registering people who can't vote or don't exist, and it draws a great deal of negative attention from bad registration forms. In fact, the best way for ACORN to get the policy changes it wants is by registering people legally.
Does that mean ACORN doesn't have problems? No, but Geraghty's argument that ACORN represents "organized voter fraud" based on their workers turning in bad forms is less than compelling. But if Geraghty is very concerned about registration fraud, I encourage him to look into Nathan Sproul, to whom McCain has given a great deal of money for voter registration efforts. Sam Stein reports that Sproul is accused of voter registration fraud in several states, which can only mean that he's part of a massive conspiracy to steal the election and unravel the fabric of our democracy.
Geraghty then made this argument:
Their argument is that no state authority should be ensuring that voter registration applications match actual people, despite the horror stories of ACORN pestering people to register 27 times, etc. Anyone who shows up at any voting booth should be allowed to cast a vote, whether or not they can demonstrate that they are who they say they are.
Well, not that's not my argument. My argument is that the law requires first time voters to show a federally approved form of ID, which makes it terribly difficult to vote as Tony Romo unless you are in fact, Tony Romo. But I should be clear on this second point: I'm not against purges, which are a necessary part of maintaining the voter rolls. I'm against purges being conducted in secret without oversight, without informing the subject of a purge before they are purged, and when a purge is conducted illegally within 90 days of an election. I'm against them being done this way because they end up disenfranchising thousands of people, often over data entry problems, illegible handwriting, and typos. Given that we know the databases are prone to error, this shouldn't be controversial.
--A. Serwer
