It's Only Fraud If You're the One Doing It

So, if you watch Fox News or generally subscribe to the Republican party line you surely know for a fact that voter fraud is a grave and very real threat to our fragile democracy. So you certainly must support all of the efforts being put in place by multiple states to ensure the integrity of our votes.

Of course, in the real world, voter fraud is about as much of a threat to democracy as the infield fly rule.

Five years after the Bush administration began a crackdown on voter fraud, the Justice Department has turned up virtually no evidence of any organized effort to skew federal elections, according to court records and interviews.

Although Republican activists have repeatedly said fraud is so widespread that it has corrupted the political process and, possibly, cost the party election victories, about 120 people have been charged and 86 convicted as of last year.

Most of those charged have been Democrats, voting records show. Many of those charged by the Justice Department appear to have mistakenly filled out registration forms or misunderstood eligibility rules, a review of court records and interviews with prosecutors and defense lawyers show.

In Miami, an assistant United States attorney said many cases there involved what were apparently mistakes by immigrants, not fraud.

So, because after five years of the Bush administration investigating and finding nothing of any real impact going on, the natural response of the Republican Party is to push harder to eliminate the scourge that their own president's administration found to be virtually non-existent. They would have done it sooner but they needed to take over a mess of state legislatures first. Which they now have.

Is there a single honest person alive who doesn't know what this is really about? The people least likely to have photo IDs, which is the new standard that the Repubs are pushing, are (and this is entirely coincidental, I'm sure) the same folks who are most likely to vote for Democrats. That is, poor people, black people, young people, poor black young people and the elderly, who are turning on the GOP like German Shepherds over the Paul Ryan gang's efforts to kill Medicare.

So the voter fraud issue needs to be revived in order to a) deflect attention from the actual problems we have right now, and b) help to ensure that fewer people who might vote against them next year and in years beyond are actually able to do so.

This is gutter politics. This is gross. This is much more of a threat to democracy than the supposed voter fraud going on. Tens of thousands of voters will be turned away or have their votes not counted. And I think we know who's going to benefit from all of this.

Surprised?