No Such Thing As Voter Fraud? Guess Again

Democrats and the Obama Administration have waged an intensive jihad against laws intended to prevent voter fraud, including voter ID laws.One of the consistent arguments they make in spite of all the evidence to the contrary is that voter fraud 'doesn't exist', that's it's 'negligible' that it 'isn't a real problem'.

The truth is that not only is voter fraud a seminal and major problem, but a key tool Democrats need to win elections.

In Byron York's column today, he explores how the votes of ineligible felons were used to throw the Minnesota 2008 senate race to Al Franken, with disastrous results for our Republic:

In the '08 campaign, Republican Sen. Norm Coleman was running for re-election against Democrat Al Franken. It was impossibly close; on the morning after the election, after 2.9 million people had voted, Coleman led Franken by 725 votes.

Franken and his Democratic allies dispatched an army of lawyers to challenge the results. After the first canvass, Coleman's lead was down to 206 votes. That was followed by months of wrangling and litigation. In the end, Franken was declared the winner by 312 votes. He was sworn into office in July 2009, eight months after the election.

During the controversy a conservative group called Minnesota Majority began to look into claims of voter fraud. Comparing criminal records with voting rolls, the group identified 1,099 felons -- all ineligible to vote -- who had voted in the Franken-Coleman race.

Minnesota Majority took the information to prosecutors across the state, many of whom showed no interest in pursuing it. But Minnesota law requires authorities to investigate such leads. And so far, Fund and von Spakovsky report, 177 people have been convicted -- not just accused, but convicted -- of voting fraudulently in the Senate race. Another 66 are awaiting trial. "The numbers aren't greater," the authors say, "because the standard for convicting someone of voter fraud in Minnesota is that they must have been both ineligible, and 'knowingly' voted unlawfully." The accused can get off by claiming not to have known they did anything wrong.

And that's just felons. There's also evidence of a number of irregularities involving deceased 'voters' still on the rolls and absentee ballots...and that the votes of 1,200 active duty military votes might have been suppressed.

Oh, and the consequences of that election, with it's 'negligible' voter fraud? Al Franken became the 60th vote pass ObamaCare, as well as a lot of other questionable legislation that was part of President Obama's agenda.

York makes a final argument, and one that's worth noting...that voter fraud violates the voting rights of legitimate voters:

[DNC head Debbie] Wasserman Shultz and her fellow Democrats are doing everything they can to stop reasonable anti-fraud measures, like removing ineligible voters from the rolls and voter ID. Through it all, they maintain they are simply defending our most fundamental right, the right to vote.

But voter fraud involves that right, too. "When voters are disenfranchised by the counting of improperly cast ballots or outright fraud, their civil rights are violated just as surely as if they were prevented from voting," write Fund and von Spakovsky. "The integrity of the ballot box is just as important to the credibility of elections as access to it."

Illegal aliens, convicted felons and dead people...an important constituency, the Democrats can't do without, and one they're fighting hard to keep.