Individual Liberty — Individual Responsibility

For those we lost, We will not forget 09/11/2001

“Our God given unalienable rights are given to us all as individuals. They tell us what we may do for ourselves, and they are the embodiment of liberty. The so-called rights that government gives to some of us are parcelled out to select groups as classes. They tell us what one class of people may require another to do for them, and they are the very essence of slavery.”
— Perri Nelson, February 9, 2010

A bheil Gàidhlig agaibh?

Voter fraud is easy

Published Fri, Jun 22 2007 2:30 PM
Technorati Tags: Elections, Immigration, Corruption

Jane Balogh proved it. All you need to register to vote in King County is a utility bill. A phone bill will do. You don't have to prove your identity any further than that, and you don't have to prove your citizenship.

Sure, the registration application warns you "NOTE: Do not complete this form if you are not a U.S. Citizen". It also asks you "Are you a Citizen of the United States?" and gives you the options of selecting "Yes", or "No". It goes further to warn you that

If you knowingly provide false information on this voter registration form or knowingly make a false declaration about your qualifications for voter registration you will have committed a class C felony that is punishable by imprisonment for up to five years, or by a fine of up to ten thousand dollars or both imprisonment and fine. (RCW 29A.08.210)

Do you think that will stop someone who has already ignored our country's laws? Surely you recall the mass protests by the Hispanic communities that took place last year. Do you remember the huge voter registration drives that were supported by the Democratic party at the same time? Do you remember the claims that it was "racist" to oppose those drives?

With voter registration standards like King County's we may already have hundreds or even thousands of illegal immigrants or other non-citizens registered to vote in King County now. All they need is a phone bill.

Here are a few highlights from the Seattle Times article about Jane Balogh:

Jane Balogh had a pretty good idea who was calling when the phone rang and the caller asked for Duncan M. MacDonald.
Duncan is the dog Balogh registered as a voter seven months before the November 2006 election.
…
After making her point — how easy it is for a voter to register illegally — Balogh will be arraigned in King County Superior Court on Tuesday on a misdemeanor charge of making a false statement to a public official.
…
Balogh, who lives with Duncan, an Australian shepherd-terrier mix, and four other dogs and four cats, registered her dog as a protest of a 2005 state voter-registration statute that she says makes it too easy for noncitizens to vote. She put her phone bill in Duncan's name, then used the phone bill as identification to register him as a voter.
"I wasn't trying to do anything fraudulent. I was trying to prove that our system is flawed. So I got myself in trouble," she says.
If she accepts the plea deal offered by prosecutors, they won't ask for jail time but will recommend she be sentenced to 10 hours of community service, pay a $250 fine and commit no other crimes for a year.
Acting Prosecuting Attorney Dan Satterberg says his office "can't simply look the other way. They say you should let sleeping dogs lie, but you can't let voting dogs vote."

Why not? As far as I know nothing in Washington State law says that you must be a human to vote. Besides, the prosecuting attorney's office ignored a whole pile of double-votes, votes by dead people and the like in 2004, and 2006. Why not ignore a dog registered to vote that didn't actually vote?

To top it all off, if a dog can register to vote, and receive a ballot, what's to stop the dog's owner from actually voting twice? And if a dog can outwit the King County Elections office, how hard could it be for an illegal immigrant, or a felon that's been barred from voting?

Cross posted at NW Bloggers. Andrew's Dad posted on this too.

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