democratic election themes and daily talking points

[wesw]

republicans are racist because they support voter ID requirements....., silly and ridiculous, won t fly

there is a war on women by republicans....., also silly, won t fly

these are the latest themes

today s talking point, sent by E-mail, was that the republicans should have all called out trump last night and berated him for his demeaning comments about women. the fact that they didn t proves that they are anti-woman......, silly, won t fly

the point yesterday, sent by e-mail, was that , on the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, the republicans were trying to hold down the black vote by supporting voter ID laws.

I guess that the DNC and Hillary don t trust their supporters to think for themselves......

repeat after me. republicans oppress everyone, republicans are racist, they wage war on women........

EXTERMINATE!!!!! EXTERMINATE!!!!!!!!!!

[wesw]

todays theme....

trump won the debate and the GOP voters love his megyn Kelly comments...

[Guinevere]

Oh yes, I got pages and pages of those "talking points" in my email. That's all my Dem/socialist friends are discussing yesterday/today.

[wesw]

I know, I ve seen you use the exact words often enough....

it s reached the point where every ditzy soccer mom and hillbilly housewife can see it.

Hillary is losing the white women

"where da white women at" will be the question on election day.....

[MajGenl.Meade]

That Voter ID requirement is strong meat.... an awful disenfranchisement of at least three people... the horror!

Remember to bring identification with you to the polls. Voters must bring identification to the polls in order to verify identity. Identification may include current and valid photo identification, a military identification, or a copy of a current (within the last 12 months) utility bill, bank statement, government check, paycheck, or other government document, other than a notice of an election or a voter registration notification sent by a board of elections, that shows the voter’s name and current address. Voters who do not provide one of these documents will still be able to vote by providing the last four digits of the voter’s Social Security number and by casting a provisional ballot pursuant to R.C. 3505.181.

[Guinevere]

Show me Wes, exactly where on this board I've used those "exact words."

[Guinevere]

That Voter ID requirement is strong meat.... an awful disenfranchisement of at least three people... the horror!

Remember to bring identification with you to the polls. Voters must bring identification to the polls in order to verify identity. Identification may include current and valid photo identification, a military identification, or a copy of a current (within the last 12 months) utility bill, bank statement, government check, paycheck, or other government document, other than a notice of an election or a voter registration notification sent by a board of elections, that shows the voter’s name and current address. Voters who do not provide one of these documents will still be able to vote by providing the last four digits of the voter’s Social Security number and by casting a provisional ballot pursuant to R.C. 3505.181.

So my Mom no longer drives, her utilities are either included in her rent or I pay them and the bills come to my address. Her SS check is direct deposit (a requirement), and her bank statements go to my sister who handles the bills. And there are lots and lots of seniors in similar circumstances. Why is her vote less valid than any other American?

I'll tell you why - because she and others similarly situated overwhelmingly vote Democratic and the Republicans want them disenfranchised.

Do you know what provisional ballots are? Do you know they are generally not counted unless the race is so close in that precinct that there is a hand count -and even then provisional ballots are counted last if at all.

Tell me, where did you get the figure of "3?"

How large a problem is voter fraud, exactly, and can you provide some specific examples?

[wesw]

well, exact themes then..., you know....

I m gonna stop telling you all the mistakes Hillary and the DNC are making tho. they might actually listen to you at headquarters and start behaving reasonably.....

...nah. that is far fetched....

[MajGenl.Meade]

So my Mom no longer drives, her utilities are either included in her rent or I pay them and the bills come to my address. Her SS check is direct deposit (a requirement), and her bank statements go to my sister who handles the bills. And there are lots and lots of seniors in similar circumstances. Why is her vote less valid than any other American?

Get her a state ID. Have the Soc Sec admin send her benefits letter to her address.

[wesw]

foreshadowing tomorrow s talking points?

"republicans wage war on the elderly..." ?

[Lord Jim]

foreshadowing tomorrow s talking points?

"republicans wage war on the elderly..." ?

You're behind the curve on that one wes...

The Democrats have been running on "The Republicans are going to throw grandma out into the street" in every election cycle since 1964...

[TPFKA@W]

What responsible person doesn't carry some form of ID? If you go to the hospital for treatment you have to show ID.

Good grief.

[Guinevere]

Nope. Medicare card and insurance card are all the hospitals ever asked for, none of which include a photograph or an address. I spent a year with her in and out of hospitals and rehab facilities, including one of the top hospitals in the world. Never ever was asked for any ID.

What part of "she no longer drives" can you people not read? Many little old ladies are in a similar boat, and so do not have government issued photo ID with w current address, or any easy way to get one.

And Meade, I answered your question, so please, again, answer mine.

[TPFKA@W]

Nope. Medicare card and insurance card are all the hospitals ever asked for, none of which include a photograph or an address. I spent a year with her in and out of hospitals and rehab facilities, including one of the top hospitals in the world. Never ever was asked for any ID.

What part of "she no longer drives" can you people not read? Many little old ladies are in a similar boat, and so do not have government issued photo ID with w current address, or any easy way to get one.

And Meade, I answered your question, so please, again, answer mine.

Every single time, even for lab work, they ask to see ID when registering. It is to prevent insurance fraud I presume. I can't even imagine what you describe.
How does she write checks? People who don't drive here get state IDs.

[MajGenl.Meade]

Tell me, where did you get the figure of "3?"

How large a problem is voter fraud, exactly, and can you provide some specific examples?

Fair enough. Questions asked and to be answered:

"3" was a joke. I have no idea how big a problem voter fraud is. We know it happens (and has happened historically). Presumably voter ID has/will reduce the problem. Personally I'm all for a National Identity card for every citizen. I see nothing wrong with requiring a person claiming to be a person to prove they are that person.

Back to old folks who don't drive - STATE ISSUED PHOTO ID is available in Ohio (FROM THE BMV) for anyone who doesn't drive and is old enough to vote. A letter of benefits from the SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION or the IRS is sufficient ID. Explain why these are not available? Or is voting not important enough to take the trouble?

[MajGenl.Meade]

Nope. Medicare card and insurance card are all the hospitals ever asked for, none of which include a photograph or an address. I spent a year with her in and out of hospitals and rehab facilities, including one of the top hospitals in the world. Never ever was asked for any ID.

What part of "she no longer drives" can you people not read? Many little old ladies are in a similar boat, and so do not have government issued photo ID with w current address, or any easy way to get one.

And Meade, I answered your question, so please, again, answer mine.

Every single time, even for lab work, they ask to see ID when registering. It is to prevent insurance fraud I presume. I can't even imagine what you describe.
How does she write checks? People who don't drive here get state IDs.

Quite right on the state IDs. However, I have to support Guin on the medical side; I'm never asked to prove that the medical insurance scheme membership card I produce is mine. In fact, three days ago I kept an appointment after leaving my wallet at home with no card and no ID at all

[Econoline]

During this (or any) electoral season, it pays to get off the left-right political axis – and examine particular political issues on their own merits. So let’s take a closer look at one of them… Voter ID laws.

To some, these laws deal with a problem -- electoral fraud, when cheaters pretend to be someone else to cast illicit vote. Statistics show such voter fraud is extremely rare. (See “Voter Fraud is Rare, but Myth is Widespread.”) Still, when it happens it is a bad thing.

Opponents to this spate of laws – which have nearly all erupted in “red states” – denounce them as infringing on the rights of, not just poor people, but the ill-educated, or recent citizens, and the young, who often lack clear ID. In particular, this presents hardships for women, who may have failed to re-document after marriage or divorce. Some on the left call this another front in the “War on Women.”

Fundamentally, Voter ID laws are supported by red state white-older voters because – and let’s be frank – there is an element of truth in what they say. Voting is important. It is reasonable, over an extended period of time, to ratchet up accountability – and to ask that people prove who they are. That reasonableness lets these politicians propose these laws as a necessity – and implicitly, those who oppose them must have some agenda: “If you don’t want voters to show ID, it’s because you want to cheat.” This is how you get a reversal of those who are blatantly cheating accusing others of cheating. It’s important to parse this issue.

To reiterate this point: there is nothing intrinsically wrong with gradually ratcheting up the degree to which we apply accountability to potential failure modes in society. This is what my book, The Transparent Society, is all about. We apply reciprocal accountability to each other. For example, we have poll watchers to make sure there is no cheating during elections.

(Is it also reasonable to demand accountability from the manufacturers of voting machines? Nearly all such companies are now controlled by men who have been high level Republican partisans, at one time or another. Should this be deemed… suspicious? Especially in those states (mostly red) where no paper audit trail is required?)

Is there a test that would nail down whether Voter ID laws are, as their proponents say, merely ratcheting up accountability – or, whether they are, as the opponents of these laws say, blatant fragrant attempts to cheat and steal votes away from poor people, minorities, young folks, and women.

Is there such a simple and clear test?

There is.

== The crucial metric of hypocrisy: compliance assistance ==

According to the conservative thinkers and agendas going back to Buckley and Goldwater, regulations that are onerously placed on business should be accompanied by assistance so those businesses can meet and comply with these new regulations. This is standard conservative dogma.

Indeed, Democrats agree! Almost always, whenever new and onerous regulations are applied to business, there are allocations of money to set up offices, call-lines, visiting experts and grace periods with the aim of helping corporations – and the rich – comply with the new regulations. It’s called compliance assistance.

You can see how this applies to the topic at-hand. The fundamental test here is this: In any of the red states that have passed new Voter ID laws, or other laws that restrict the ability of poor people young people, women and so on to exercise their franchise, were any significant funds appropriated or allocated for compliance assistance?

Were any new offices, call-lines, visiting experts and grace periods set up to help them comply? “Here is an onerous new burden upon the poor, women and so on -- but we are going to show our commitment to assist voters with these new regulations, by allocating money.” A serious effort to go out into the communities and help the poor, minorities, recent immigrants, women, young people – to obtain the identification they need to exercise their sovereign right to vote.

Note! This type of outreach would not just help them with voting, but would likely help them to STOP being poor! By helping them get on the path to helping themselves. This should be what conservatives are for.

Instead these efforts are sabotaged, deliberately and relentlessly. Not one red cent has been allocated for compliance assistance in any of the red states that have passed these new voter ID laws.

Not one red cent.

== Dealing with vampires: always seek the silver bullet ==

There you have it, you liberals out there. Don’t make this a matter of goody-goody, or of denying a long term need to ratchet up accountability. It makes it look like you’re in favor of cheating. Or it gives fools that excuse.

Make it a matter of hypocrisy. Of lying. The blatant lack of sincere compliance assistance provides clear-cut and decisive proof that these are attempts to steal elections – just like gerrymandering.

Your silver bullet. This is what you use. The fact of zero Compliance Assistance exposes the hypocrisy here.

That is what makes the difference between people who say, “We need to have more accountability in the voter rolls” and blatant, lying, hypocritical thieves, for whom no excuse or shelter can excuse the title of traitor.

Make this clear to your uncles and cousins. If, when they hear about this, they are still supporters of these horrid hypocritical robbers, then the tar sticks to them as well.

Source: http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2014/10/v ... ility.html

[Lord Jim]

Wow, this one is a "Ground Hogs Day " topic that just keeps coming up over and over and over...

Once again, the problem of fraudulent voting is NOT as many Democrats, (and the author of the article Econo quotes) falsely define it; as "voter impersonation". In other words, "There's a Joe Doakes in precinct A who is legally entitled to vote, and somebody else shows up to vote claiming to be Joe Doakes". They wrongly define t this way, and then based on their false definition, they declare there is no problem.

The real problem is "citizen impersonation". In other words, "There's a Joe Doakes who is not legally entitled to vote who nevertheless was able to register because the states have abandoned any serious effort to obtain proof of citizenship at the time of registration."

Ideally, you would have a system where definite proof of citizenship would have to be provided at time of registration. But since that has been abandoned, the voting booth has become the last firewall against widespread non-citizen voting.

And the available evidence, (I think this may be the 4th time I've posted this) demonstrates that this firewall is definitely needed:

Whenever this topic recurs, it's appropriate to re-post this:

The "myth" here is the idea that registration and voting by non-citizens is a myth. It is well documented, and widespread.:

In 2005, the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that up to 3 percent of the 30,000 individuals called for jury duty from voter registration rolls over a two-year period in just one U.S. district court were not U.S. citizens. While that may not seem like many, just 3 percent of registered voters would have been more than enough to provide the winning presiden­tial vote margin in Florida in 2000. Indeed, the Cen­sus Bureau estimates that there are over a million illegal aliens in Florida, and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has prosecuted more non-citizen voting cases in Florida than in any other state.

Florida is not unique. Thousands of non-citizens are registered to vote in some states, and tens if not hundreds of thousands in total may be present on the voter rolls nationwide. These numbers are significant: Local elections are often decided by only a handful of votes, and even national elections have likely been within the margin of the number of non-citizens ille­gally registered to vote.

Yet there is no reliable method to determine the number of non-citizens registered or actually voting because most laws to ensure that only citizens vote are ignored, are inadequate, or are systematically undermined by government officials. Those who ignore the implications of non-citizen registration and voting either are willfully blind to the problem or may actually favor this form of illegal voting.

Americans may disagree on many areas of immi­gration policy, but not on the basic principle that only citizens—and not non-citizens, whether legally present or not—should be able to vote in elections. Unless and until immigrants become citizens, they must respect the laws that bar non-citizen voting. To keep non-citizens from diluting citizens' votes, immigration and election officials must cooperate far more effectively than they have to date, and state and federal officials must increase their efforts to enforce the laws against non-citizen voting that are already on the books.

An Enduring Problem

Costas Bakouris, head of the Greek chapter of Transparency International, says in an interview that ending corruption is easy: enforce the law. Illegal voting by immigrants in America is noth­ing new. Almost as long as there have been elec­tions, there have been Tammany Halls trying to game the ballot box. Well into the 20th century, the political machines asserted their ascendancy on Election Day, stealing elections in the boroughs of New York and the wards of Chicago. Quite regu­larly, Irish immigrants were lined up and counted in canvasses long before the term "citizen" ever applied to them—and today it is little different.

Yet in the debates over what to do about the 8 million to 12 million illegal aliens estimated to be in the United States, there has been virtually no discus­sion of how to ensure that they (and millions of legal aliens) do not register and vote in elections.

Citizenship is and should be a basic requirement for voting. Citizenship is a legal requirement to vote in federal and state elections, except for a small number of local elections in a few jurisdictions.

Some Americans argue that alien voting is a non­existent problem or dismiss reported cases of non-citizen voting as unimportant because, they claim, there are no cases in which non-citizens "intention­ally" registered to vote or voted "while knowing that they were ineligible." Even if this latter claim were true—which it is not—every vote cast by a non-citizen, whether an illegal alien or a resident alien legally in the country, dilutes or cancels the vote of a citizen and thus disenfranchises him or her. To dismiss such stolen votes because the non-citizens supposedly did not know they were acting illegally when they cast a vote debases one of the most important rights of citizens.

The evidence is indisputable that aliens, both legal and illegal, are registering and voting in federal, state, and local elections. Following a mayor's race in Compton, California, for example, aliens testi­fied under oath in court that they voted in the elec­tion. In that case, a candidate who was elected to the city council was permanently disqualified from holding public office in California for soliciting non-citizens to register and vote. The fact that non-citizens registered and voted in the election would never have been discovered except for the fact that it was a very close election and the in­cumbent mayor, who lost by less than 300 votes, contested it.

Similarly, a 1996 congressional race in California may have been stolen by non-citizen voting. Republican incumbent Bob Dornan was defending himself against a spirited challenger, Democrat Lor­etta Sanchez. Sanchez won the election by just 979 votes, and Dornan contested the election in the U.S. House of Representatives. His challenge was dismissed after an investigation by the House Com­mittee on Oversight and Government Reform turned up only 624 invalid votes by non-citizens who were present in the U.S. Immigration and Nat­uralization Service (INS) database because they had applied for citizenship, as well as another 124 improper absentee ballots. The investigation, however, could not detect illegal aliens, who were not in the INS records.

The Oversight Committee pointed out the ele­phant in the room: "If there is a significant num­ber of ‘documented aliens,' aliens in INS records, on the Orange County voter registration rolls, how many illegal or undocumented aliens may be regis­tered to vote in Orange County?" There is a strong possibility that, with only about 200 votes determining the winner, enough undetected aliens registered and voted to change the outcome of the election. This is particularly true since the California Secretary of State complained that the INS refused his request to check the entire Orange County voter registration file, and no complete check of all of the individuals who voted in the congressional race was ever made.

The "Quick Ticket"

Non-citizen voting is likely growing at the same rate as the alien population in the United States; but because of deficiencies in state law and the failure of federal agencies to comply with federal law, there are almost no procedures in place that allow election officials to detect, deter, and prevent non-citizens from registering and voting. Instead, officials are largely dependent on an "honor sys­tem" that expects aliens to follow the law. There are numerous cases showing the failure of this honor system.

The frequent claim that illegal aliens do not reg­ister in order "to stay below the radar" misses the fact that many aliens apparently believe that the potential benefit of registering far outweighs the chances of being caught and prosecuted. Many district attorneys will not prosecute what they see as a "victimless and non-violent" crime that is not a priority.

On the benefit side of the equation, a voter regis­tration card is an easily obtainable document—they are routinely issued without any checking of identi­fication—that an illegal alien can use for many dif­ferent purposes, including obtaining a driver's license, qualifying for a job, and even voting. The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, for example, requires employers to verify that all newly hired employees present documentation verifying their identity and legal authorization to work in the United States. In essence, this means that new employees have to present evidence that they are either U.S. citizens or legal aliens with a work per­mit. The federal I-9 form that employers must com­plete for all new employees provides a list of documentation that can be used to establish iden­tity—including a voter registration card.

How aliens view the importance of this benefit was illustrated by the work of a federal grand jury in 1984 that found large numbers of aliens regis­tered to vote in Chicago. As the grand jury reported, many aliens "register to vote so that they can obtain documents identifying them as U.S. citizens" and have "used their voters' cards to obtain a myriad of benefits, from social security to jobs with the De­fense Department." The U.S. Attorney at the time estimated that there were at least 80,000 illegal aliens registered to vote in Chicago, and dozens were indicted and convicted for registering and voting.

The grand jury's report resulted in a limited cleanup of the voter registration rolls in Chicago, but just one year later, INS District Director A. D. Moyer testified before a state legislative task force that 25,000 illegal and 40,000 legal aliens remained on the rolls in Chicago. Moyer told the Illinois Senate that non-citizens registered so they could get a voter registration card for identification, adding that the card was "a quick ticket into the unemployment compensation system." An alien from Belize, for example, testified that he and his two sisters were able to register easily because they were not asked for any identification or proof of citizenship and lied about where they were born. After securing registration, he voted in Chicago.

Once such aliens are registered, of course, they receive the same encouragement to vote from campaigns' and parties' get-out-the-vote programs and advertisements that all other registered voters receive. Political actors have no way to distinguish between individuals who are properly registered and non-citizens who are illegally registered.

A Failure to Cooperate

Obtaining an accurate assessment of the size of this problem is difficult. There is no systematic review of voter registration rolls by states to find non-citizens, and the relevant federal agencies—in direct violation of federal law—refuse to cooperate with state election officials seeking to verify the citi­zenship status of registered voters. Federal immigra­tion law requires these agencies to "respond to an inquiry by a Federal, State, or local government agency, seeking to verify or ascertain the citizenship or immigration status of any individual within the jurisdiction of the agency for any purpose autho­rized by law, by providing the requested verification or status information," regardless of any other pro­vision of federal law, such as the Privacy Act. However, examples of refusal to cooperate are legion:

-- In declining to cooperate with a request by Maryland to check the citizenship status of individuals registered to vote there, a spokes­man for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (CIS) mistakenly declared that the agency could not release that information because "it is important to safeguard the confidentiality of each legal immigrant, especially in light of the federal Privacy Act and the Immigration and Nationality Act."

One surprising result of this policy: In 2004, a guilty verdict in a murder trial in Maryland was jeopardized because a non-citizen was discov­ered on the jury—which had been chosen from the voter rolls.

-- In 2005, Sam Reed, the Secretary of State of Washington, asked the CIS to check the immi­gration status of registered voters in Washing­ton; the agency refused to cooperate.

-- A request from the Fulton County, Georgia, Board of Registration and Elections in 1998 to the old Immigration and Naturalization Service to check the immigration status of 775 regis­tered voters was likewise refused for want of a notarized consent from each voter because of "federal privacy act" concerns.

-- In 1997, the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's office in Dallas were investigating voting by non-citi­zens. They sent a computerized tape of the names of individuals who had voted to the INS requesting a check against INS records, but the INS refused to cooperate with the criminal investigation. An INS official was quoted as saying that the INS bureaucracy did not "want to open a Pandora's Box…. If word got out that this is a substantial problem, it could tie up all sorts of manpower. There might be a few thou­sand [illegal voters] in Dallas, for example, but there could be tens of thousands in places like New York, Chicago or Miami."

These incidents show that the CIS and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the successor agencies to the INS, are either igno­rant of federal legal requirements or deliberately ignoring them. An inquiry by a state or local election official regarding voter eligibility based on citizenship falls squarely within their statu­tory authority.

To be sure, CIS and ICE databases are not comprehensive; they contain information only about legal immigrants who have applied for the documentation necessary to be in the United States and illegal immigrants who have been detained. But even access to that information would be a big step forward for election officials in their attempts to try to clean up registration lists and find those aliens who are illegally registered and voting in elections.

The Honor System

The refusal of federal agencies to obey the law compels local election officials to rely almost en­tirely on the "honor system" to keep non-citizens from the polls. As Maryland's state election adminis­trator has complained, "There is no way of check­ing…. We have no access to any information about who is in the United States legally or otherwise."

Most discoveries of non-citizens on the registra­tion rolls are therefore accidental. Though the Department of Justice has no procedures in place for a systematic investigation of these types of crim­inal violations, in just a three year period, it prose­cuted and convicted more than a dozen non-citizens who registered and voted in federal elec­tions in Alaska, Florida, the District of Columbia, and Colorado. Among them was an alien in southern Florida, Rafael Velasquez, who not only voted, but even ran for the state legislature. Eight of the 19 September 11 hijackers were registered to vote in either Virginia or Florida—registrations that were probably obtained when they applied for driver's licenses.

In 1994, Mario Aburto Martinez, a Mexican national and the assassin of Mexican presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio, was found to have registered twice to vote in California. A random sample of just 10 percent of the 3,000 Hispanics registered to vote in California's 39th Assembly District by an independent group "revealed phony addresses and large numbers of registrants who admitted they were not U.S. citi­zens." This problem may be partially explained by the testimony of a Hispanic member of the Los Angeles Police Department who had been a volun­teer for the California-based Southwest Voter Reg­istration Education Project. When she reported to her supervisor that her fellow volunteers were not asking potential voters whether they were citizens, she was reprimanded "and told that she was not to ask that question…only whether the person wished to register to vote." Similarly, the Dor­nan–Sanchez investigation produced an affidavit from a non-citizen stating that the Sanchez cam­paign's field director, an elected member of the Anaheim Board of Education, told him that it "didn't matter" that he was not a U.S. citizen—he should register and vote anyway.

In 2006, Paul Bettencourt, Voter Registrar for Harris County, Texas, testified before the U.S. Com­mittee on House Administration that the extent of illegal voting by foreign citizens in Harris County was impossible to determine but "that it has and will continue to occur." Twenty-two percent of county residents, he explained, were born outside of the United States, and more than 500,000 were non-citizens. Bettencourt noted that he cancelled the registration of a Brazilian citizen in 1996 after she acknowledged on a jury summons that she was not a U.S. citizen. Despite that cancellation, how­ever, "She then reapplied in 1997, again claiming to be a U.S. citizen, and was again given a voter card, which was again cancelled. Records show she was able to vote at least four times in general and primary elections."

In 2005, Bettencourt's office turned up at least 35 cases in which foreign nationals applied for or received voter cards, and he pointed out that Harris County regularly had "elections decided by one, two, or just a handful of votes." In fact, a Norwe­gian citizen was discovered to have voted in a state legislative race in Harris County that was decided by only 33 votes. Nor is this problem unique to Harris County. Recent reports indicate that hun­dreds of illegal aliens registered to vote in Bexar County, Texas, and that at least 41 of them have voted, some several times, in a dozen local, state, and federal elections.

In 2005, Arizona passed Proposition 200, which requires anyone registering to vote to provide "sat­isfactory evidence of United States citizenship," such as a driver's license, a birth certificate, a pass­port, naturalization documents, or any other docu­ments accepted by the federal government to prove citizenship for employment purposes. The state issues a "Type F" driver's license to individuals who are legally present in the United States but are not citizens. Since Proposition 200 took effect, 2,177 non-citizens applying for such licenses have attempted to register to vote. Another 30,000 have been denied registration because they could not produce evidence of citizenship.

The constitutionality of Arizona's requirement is currently being litigated in federal court. The dis­trict court hearing the case refused to issue a pre­liminary injunction against enforcement of the law, and the Supreme Court vacated a preliminary injunction issued by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Trial is scheduled for July 2008. The plaintiffs will have to convince the presiding judge that the very same proof of citizenship required by the federal government before an individual can work is somehow unlawful when imposed by a state before a person can vote.

Some non-citizen registrations can be detected through the jury process. The vast majority of state and federal courts draw their jury pools from voter registration lists, and the jury questionnaires used by court clerks ask potential jurors whether they are U.S. citizens. In most states, however, and throughout the federal court system, court clerks rarely notify local election officials that potential jurors have sworn under oath that they are not U.S. citizens. In jurisdictions that share that informa­tion, election officials routinely discover non-citi­zens on the voter rolls. For example, the district attorney in Maricopa County, Arizona, testified that after receiving a list of potential jurors who admit­ted they were not citizens, he indicted 10 who had registered to vote. (All had sworn on their registra­tion forms that they were U.S. citizens.) Four had actually voted in elections. The district attorney was investigating 149 other cases.

The county recorder in Maricopa County had also received inquiries from aliens seeking verifica­tion, for their citizenship applications, that they had not registered or voted. Thirty-seven of those aliens had registered to vote, and 15 of them had actually voted. As the county's district attorney explained, these numbers come "from a relatively small universe of individuals—legal immigrants who seek to become citizens…. These numbers do not tell us how many illegal immigrants have regis­tered and voted." Even these small numbers, though, could have been enough to sway an elec­tion. A 2004 Arizona primary election, explained the district attorney, was determined by just 13 votes. Clearly, non-citizens who illegally registered and voted in Maricopa County could have deter­mined the outcome of the election.

These numbers become more alarming when one considers that only a very small percentage of regis­tered voters are called for jury duty in most jurisdic­tions. The California Secretary of State reported in 1998 that 2,000 to 3,000 of the individuals sum­moned for jury duty in Orange County each month claimed an exemption from jury service because they were not U.S. citizens, and 85 percent to 90 percent of those individuals were summoned from the voter registration list, rather than Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) records. While some of those individuals may have simply committed per­jury to avoid jury service, this represents a signifi­cant number of potentially illegal voters: 20,400 to 30,600 non-citizens summoned from the voter reg­istration list over a one-year period.

http://www.thecuttingedgenews.com/index.php?article=691

And what's recorded here is obviously just the tip of the iceberg, given the way the Feds have tried to block and derail every serious effort to investigate this in a systematic way.

[Big RR]

, I have to support Guin on the medical side; I'm never asked to prove that the medical insurance scheme membership card I produce is mine. In fact, three days ago I kept an appointment after leaving my wallet at home with no card and no ID at all

I agree with Meade; in all (well not all that many, but trips to the lab and even once to the ER in the hospital) my appointments where I am not known all I have ever been asked for is my insurance CARD--no photo ID or proof of address. Same with my MIL who is on medicare and has had a lot of appointments. I guess it might vary from state to state.

ETA: Jim, I believe every state has a procedure whereby any party or individual on the ballot can send challengers to the voting places to challenge anyone who claims to be a resident/citizen of the area. I have heard of, and even seen, this procedure used on a number of occasions. Since the challengers ideally know who lives where in their neighborhoods, I would think this could be used if a real question arises.

As for the GAO study, I'll take a quick look but I am unaware of any states that draw jurors exclusively from the voter registration lists, usually using the licensed drivers lists as well. The fraud that goes on in voter registration to prove citizenship can also go on in obtaining drivers licenses, and since a drivers license is all one needs to vote, the poll id laws serve not good. Add to that the number of people who are here because they have obtained the documents of a citizen (usually a deceased one) are fairly paranoid about getting caught, and while I have no doubt that some on the citizen, drivers license, or even voter registration lists may be impostors or have otherwise used false documentation, I would doubt that many actually enter a polling place to vote. And I have seen no reports on the number of vote falsely cast, only on the number that might be.

[TPFKA@W]

, I have to support Guin on the medical side; I'm never asked to prove that the medical insurance scheme membership card I produce is mine. In fact, three days ago I kept an appointment after leaving my wallet at home with no card and no ID at all

I agree with Meade; in all (well not all that many, but trips to the lab and even once to the ER in the hospital) my appointments where I am not known all I have ever been asked for is my insurance CARD--no photo ID or proof of address. Same with my MIL who is on medicare and has had a lot of appointments. I guess it might vary from state to state.

It must be a state to state thing because in recent years I have had multiple surgeries basically since 2008 due to a work related injury plus a couple of other getting older surgeries and even at my opthomologist's office where I have gone for years and they greet me by name they asked for ID when registering.