Amanda Carpenter is leading the right wing blogosphere into a festival of hyperventilation over partisan Republican poll watchers in Philadelphia being ejected from polling places, something that hampers their ability to randomly accuse people they suspect are Democrats of voter fraud. Carpenter's post is titled "A Repeat of 2004 Philly Voter Chaos, Fraud," but notably she provides no evidence of any actual fraud taking place. Likewise, John Hinderaker at Powerline blusters that "It's a time-honored tradition in some Philadelphia precincts: commandeer the premises and start running ballots through the machines, voting for Democrats." Again, they provide no actual evidence of anything like this occurring, or even that it has in the past. Despite the best efforts of a highly politicized Justice Department to give the tinfoil hats some actual examples of voter fraud, they have managed only a handful of prosecutions in eight years of being in charge.
Of course, given the relative nonexistence of the problem, and Federal ID requirements for first time voters nationally, it's worth questioning why we have partisan challenges at the polls in the first place. They are entirely arbitrary and unethical, the means for launching them rely on flawed information, and in general since the actual problem of voter fraud is so small in comparison to the disenfranchisement that occurs it's like cutting off a broken arm rather than setting it. Republicans have resisted any and all attempts to reform chaos at the polls because making voting as difficult as possible has obvious electoral benefits for their party.
Republicans would be terribly offended by any suggestion that "voter fraud" accusations are merely a pretext for intimidating minorities at the polls. And yet Josh Bolton protests too much:
There’s kind of a reverse intimidation going on. People who go and try to be poll watchers and keep fraudulently registered people from voting. They’re being told they’re intimidating minorities; it’s a form of political incorrectness.
There's no evidence of fraudulent registrations leading to fraudulent votes because of strict ID requirements, but nevertheless, not intimidating minorities at the polls is a form of political correctness.
In the meantime, there are several actual proven instances of fraud in the registration process that for some reason, Republicans haven't managed to get too angry about. The McCain campaign gave nearly 200,000 dollars to Nathan Sproul for registration work this cycle. Sproul has been investigated several times for destroying the registration forms of Democrats and firing workers who didn't register enough Republicans, and offering bonuses for workers who brought back Republican registration forms. In Ontario, Republican operative Mark Jacoby was arrested in Ontario earlier this year after he allegedly fraudulently registered in California, so he could do registration work on behalf of the GOP that included misleading voters into registering as Republicans.
Then today, we find out that in Wisconsin McCain workers were told to misrepresent themselves as volunteers rather than paid workers, having been directed to sign a confidentiality agreement that stipulated as much.
Of course, there's nothing there that gets the Right's juices flowing as quickly as unsubstantiated allegations of "voter fraud" in the inner city.
--A. Serwer
