Whom is HAVA really supposed to help? Any guesses?

[BurtWorm]

From Kevin Drum:

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2006_10/009750.php

The U.S. Election Assistance Commission is an administrative body created in 2002 as part of the Help America Vote Act. Recently they commissioned a study of voter fraud:

The bipartisan report by two consultants to the election commission casts doubt on the problem those laws are intended to address. “There is widespread but not unanimous agreement that there is little polling-place fraud, or at least much less than is claimed, including voter impersonation, ‘dead' voters, non-citizen voting and felon voters,” the report says.


The report, prepared by Tova Wang, an elections expert at the Century Foundation think tank, and Job Serebrov, an Arkansas attorney, says most fraud occurs in the absentee ballot process, such as through coercion or forgery.
That makes sense. Polling place fraud is difficult and risky, and that makes it rare. Absentee ballot fraud, by contrast, is pretty simple to pull off.

So if you want to combat voter fraud, you should put your biggest effort in the place where most fraud occurs, right? And that would be absentee voting.

But of course, there's another consideration: putting restrictions on voting in polling places primarily reduces voter turnout among Democrats. Conversely, restrictions on voting by absentee ballot primarily reduces voter turnout among Republicans.

That's a tough decision, isn't it? Do the right thing, or do the thing that hurts Democratic turnout? Hmmm. What do you think happened in this case? Would it help if I told you that this report was written four months ago and that the Republican chairman of the EAC immediately decided not to release it?

[fasttense]

1. There are huge assumptions in this post.

"Polling place fraud is difficult and risky, and that makes it rare."

Is it really that difficult? Not from the videos I've seen. Put a virus on the poll worker's card and it spreads to all other machines. Then the virus deletes itself so you can't find it. The only difficult part would be writing the virus and what I've heard that has been done already.

Is it really all that risky? We know for a fact that numerous districts in Ohio were set up to turn away possible democratic leaning voters, yet no one has been prosecuted. All the errors in the voting machines were in favor of the bushes, yet no one has been prosecuted. Doesn't sound so risky to me.

[BurtWorm]

4. I think he's talking about the kinds of fraud that humans are alleged

to engage in: voting twice, voting as a dead person, voting when not registered. This isn't about electronic fraud.

[elehhhhna]

6. He ain't been to Chicago, has he?

It happened, it happens, it will continue to happen. I know this for a fact.

[MessiahRp]

2. HAVA is a smokescreen

It was put in place to make it seem like Republicans have attempted to prevent ballot issues. Reality is HAVA or not the electronic voting machine companies determine the outcome in Republican favor.

Rp

[BurtWorm]

3. HAVA is an underreported scandal.

:patriot:

Hinder America's Voting Act

[Marie26]

5. Lobbyists & electronic vote machine companies? nt

[mod mom]

7. A ploy to funnel big bucks to GOP operatives (Diebold,E S & S) while

also controlling the outcomes of the vote.

[MrCoffee]

8. HAVA isn't about fraud, it's about provisional balloting and registration

HAVA is designed to allow those who report to the wrong polling place to cast a provisional ballot, rather than be turned away outright.

That's what Sandusky County Democratic Party v. Blackwell (OH) was all about.

[BurtWorm]

10. HAVA was passed in 2002, two years before Ohio 2004.

It has many provisions. Some address Democratic concerns, but the bill was written to pass a Republican Congress and be signed by the chief beneficiary of a fucked up electoral system, George W. Bush.

[WinkyDink]

9. This entire thang was a disingenuous ploy by Republicans to

obfuscate the REAL fraud of VOTER SUPPRESSION and HACKED MACHINES.

[librechik]

11. congresscritters who can pretend they did something about elections?