Voter Fraud In Massachusetts


The number of cases in which someone has attempted to vote illegally has been trumped up by a Republican Party which believes its supporters are sufficiently ill-informed that they will be snookered by an obvious effort to deny other Americans their right to vote.   Nonetheless, 10% more cases have occurred over the past twelve years than one study has found.     The Philadelphia Inquirer today reports

A new nationwide analysis of more than 2,000 cases of alleged election fraud over the last dozen years shows that in-person voter impersonation on Election Day was virtually nonexistent.

The analysis of 2,068 reported fraud cases by News21, a Carnegie-Knight investigative-reporting project, found 10 cases of alleged in-person voter impersonation since 2000.

With 146 million registered voters in the United States, those represent about one for every 15 million prospective voters.

Concern over voter impersonation has prompted 37 state legislatures, including Pennsylvania's, to enact or consider tougher voter-ID laws. Pennsylvania's law has been challenged in court and a decision is expected this week.

The News21 report is based on a national public-records search in which reporters sent thousands of requests to elections officers in all 50 states, asking for every case of alleged fraudulent activity - including registration fraud; absentee-ballot fraud; vote-buying; false election counts; campaign fraud; the casting of ballots by ineligible voters, such as felons and noncitizens; double voting; and voter impersonation.

If News21 had looked a little more closely, it would have found one additional case of voter fraud.    Brad Friedman explained  last month

To date, there has been no legitimate explanation for Mitt Romney having cast a vote in the January 2010 Special Election for the U.S. Senate between Scott Brown and Martha Coakley. At the time of his vote (which he has admitted doing) he owned no house in MA, and yet he was registered to vote from the address of his son's unfinished basement in Belmont, MA
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While Romney owned houses in both CA (purchased in May of 2008 for $12.5m) and NH (April of 2009 for $3.5m) at the time, it wouldn't be until July of 2010 --- a full six months after the Special Election to replace the late Sen. Ted Kennedy --- that the state's former Governor would once again own a house there, after purchasing an $895,000 townhouse in Belmont.

The state's requirements for residency for the purposes of voting are quite clear in MA. Ones residence must be "where a person dwells and which is the center of his domestic, social, and civil life," according to state law. Yet, the evidence demonstrating that Romney ran afoul of those requirements in order to vote in that election are similarly clear, at least as fairly meticulously compiled by a former Republican Presidential candidate last year.

Romney's 2010 state tax return, which he still refuses to release, even though he finally released his federal return from that same year, likely shows that he did notpay state income tax in MA, but rather declared himself to be a NH resident for its more friendly tax purposes.

Such a declaration, if revealed via his 2010 state tax return, would underscore the apparent fact that Mitt Romney himself is actually a voter fraud felon.

Republicans often accuse Democrats of conducting "class warfare" (the war which nonetheless has been concluded, and won by Mitt Romney's class) and of being jealous of the morally and economically superior "job creators" of multi-millionaires.    But, really, we are not jealous of individuals such as the presumptive GOP presidential nominee.   Most of us are fortunate enough to own, rent, or pay room and board in an apartment or some sort of house.     We don't envy Mitt Romney, only feel sorry for him because he must live, presumably with his wife, in an unfinished basement in a state he pretends doesn't exist.



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