Allegheny County, home to the city of Pittsburgh, has been hit with a lawsuit over irregularities on its voter rolls, including dead voters, duplicate registrants, and one registered voter marked as being born in June 1800. (reported on freebeacon, h/t instapundit)
I was aware that every election day in the US the dead rise, shamble towards the polling booths and vote, shall we say ‘disproportionately’ ( 🙂 ) Democrat. (It seems they have been some Democrats’ most reliable voting block for a long time.) However this is the first time I’ve wondered whether the undead join them. For the dead voters, is there some healing ritual we could perform that would free these trapped souls to ‘move on’. For the undead voter(s), is a stake through the heart the only way?
In the UK’s past, the rising of the very-recently deceased from the morgue, of the ill from their sickbeds and of the politically inactive from their slumber was only a very localised problem, but as parts of the US are not the only foreign culture from which dead voters could immigrate with the living, I hope our new government will keep more of an eye on things than past ones have done – especially when our politically-correct media avert theirs.
Yeah. It’s called “Requiring voters to provide ID proving that they are citizens of the US”. Not surprisingly the Democrats are vehemently against this idea since it would prevent the Army of the Dead from rising every election to vote for whichever pig the Democrats have signed up this time.
Well, according to the film…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln:_Vampire_Hunter
The real question is, why isn’t there a computerized system in place that automatically purges the dead from voter rolls?
Also, why isn’t there a system in place that automatically puts the newborn on track to join the voter rolls?
These are not idle questions, because that is what seems to happen in continental Europe, in my limited experience.
A related question: why isn’t there a system in the UK that automatically enrolls the newborn into the NHS, does not allow foreigners to enroll unless they register as residents, and de-rolls foreigners when they are no longer registered residents?
(That’s the way it works in Denmark.)
What i propose above might seem a bit Orwellian, and it is — a bit, but MUCH less Orwellian than the British police monitoring “”hate”” speech online.
My grandmother voted reliably Republican for 60 years. Of course, now that she’s dead, she votes Democrat.
How bad is it? I can go in to the registrar with her death certificate, and cannot un-enroll her.
The mayor was at her funeral … and he can’t un-enroll her.
Neither is an acceptable challenge to the absentee ballots filed on her behalf.
Eventually, voting will be recognized as continuing to put coins into a broken vending machine. And we’ll just have to knock that machine over.
It’s the bigotry and religious intolerance of those right-wingers towards the undead. Who are they to deny these poor unfortunates their fair share of the blood of the living? Is it any wonder that the conservatives do so poorly among the undead demographic?!
Why the complaints? Didn’t Frederick Forsyth have dead people coming back as assassins? Why the prejudice against dead voters?
Snorri Godhi wrote
“The real question is, why isn’t there a computerized system in place that automatically purges the dead from voter rolls?”
and I just laughed myself silly.
Because any attempt to update and correct voter rolls is fought tooth-and-nail by Democrats, the same way that they fight any and every attempt to add more controls and checks to voting. It’s always cast as ‘disenfranchising the poor and downtrodden’, but the truth is that a voter roll that has a healthy numnber of not-real voters – whether dead, moved away, changed address, whatever – provides the necessary resources for when Democrats need to find some more votes at the lest minute. Of course, we are told that this sort of election fraud never happens! Never! It’s just a Republican conspiracy theory! And when evidence of massive, widespread voting irregularities is found – well, that’s just human error. Could happen to anyone.
https://www.mlive.com/news/2017/02/secretary_of_state_audit_of_de.html
I wouldn’t agitate too hard for any computerized system that has anything to do with voting, if I were you. – the opportunities for virtually-undetectable fraud are just too great. Back to paper and pencil, I say.
llater,
llamas
…and mandatory proof of citizenship (NOT RESIDENCE) and eligibility to vote.
The best hard data I know of on this question is from the 2004 Washington state governor’s election. The race was within 0.005%, after a heavily contested recount, and the resulting court cases showed substantial numbers of seemingly-fraudulent ballots.
– 1,401 convicted felons (about half submitted by each candidate, actually, not just by Republicans – that means the Democrats seemingly thought some felons might have voted Republican)
– 175 illegal provisional ballots
– 77 votes where no registered voter matching them could be found
– 19 dead voters
– 6 double voters
Total 1,678, out of about 2.8 million votes cast, or about 0.06% of the votes. https://books.google.ca/books?id=cIJxBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA14&lpg=PA14#v=onepage&q&f=false
Note that not all of those are necessarily fraudulent – some of the felons may have been convicted as minors, which shouldn’t disenfranchise them under Washington law, and there’s usually at least a few errors in lists of millions. But it seems like a good estimate for the easily detectable forms of fraud. Let’s round up to deal with the undetectable (fake IDs, non-citizen voting, etc.) and guess that about one vote in a thousand is typically fraudulent, perhaps, and a goodly part of that is due to felon disenfranchisement. The number could imaginably be higher, and in some cases even a lot higher, but any higher number is likely just guesswork – this is the highest solid number I know of within my lifetime.
@Niall Kilmartin
I was aware that every election day in the US the dead rise, shamble towards the polling booths and vote, shall we say ‘disproportionately’ Democrat.
I really don’t understand your confusion Niall. The Democrat party intends to take over US Healthcare so producing death is part of their party platform. The dead are their constituency! Moreover, as you know, dead people don’t breath out carbon dioxide like those unwoke, selfish “living” people, and so death is much more environmentally friendly. The dead are their kind of people. And finally, I am really quite disgusted by your alive-ist thinking. There are no biological differences between the living and the dead, and just because some people identify as dead shouldn’t deny them their fundamental right to vote. Only the democrats stand up for the rights of the dead.
I mean really, dude, two minutes thought and you can surely see why the dead are a perfect constituency for the Democrats.
It isn’t just self-interest on the part of the current Democratic Party. They’re emotionally invested in being the Crusaders for Black Civil Rights, just like in the 1960s, and they’re bone-deep certain that the motivation behind the calls to clean up voter registration is to maliciously disenfranchise black citizens. And the reason why they’re so utterly certain is that their own political fathers and grandfathers did just that, back when blacks were a reliable Republican party vote.
On requiring proof of citizenship to vote: I can see the argument that voting is a special case, and have even made that argument myself, but I do not love the “papiere bitte” society and the bureaucratic reversal of the presumption of innocence into a requirement that one have the paperwork, permits, and ID to show that one is legally entitled to do this or that thing.
I’d prefer to crack down on wholesale vote fraud first: “Ballot harvesting” and the way that boxes of absentee and other uncounted votes keep getting “lost” or “found” until the vote-counters’ desired result is obtained. After that, various less-intrusive measures for cleaning up the voter registration rolls. Requiring the sort of citizenship ID that No2ID says No to should be a last resort.
@Frazer Orr
(D)ead people don’t breath out carbon dioxide like those unwoke, selfish “living” people, and so death is much more environmentally friendly.
And they are biodegradable … how much more environmentally friendly do you want?
After Pete B dropped out the rest of the Dems (and indeed Trump) are all knocking on a bit to say the least. So… Having voters born 220 years ago makes perfect sense because they’ll connect better with the candidates than us whippersnappers.
I call Fraser’s whole comment thread-winner to date 🙂 – but exceed him if you can. (I thank other commenters for many a humorous quip.) I would add that it is really vitality-fluid that these people are claiming to be – at at least one polling station on every election day they present as alive (unless of course they are aliens in which case they might present as dead or undead every time – I feel sure there’s an SF plot to be got out of this).
BTW, some people really do overtly present as dead. A warning-against-arrogance story is often told to psychiatry students about a professor and students touring a clinic. “This patient has an unusual syndrome”, says the professor. “He thinks he is dead.” As the rest of class begins to move on, the arrogant student asks the thinks-he’s-dead man, “Do dead people bleed?” “What a stupid question”, the patient replies. “Of course dead people don’t bleed!” The student then sticks a pin in the patient’s hand. As the patient stares incredulously at the drop of blood that forms, blatantly dumbfounded, the student steps back to receive plaudits for fastest cure in the history of psychiatry. “Oh God, doc, I’m so sorry”, says the patient. “You were right; dead people do bleed.”
Discussing voter fraud with Democrats can feel like conversing with this patient. Hence my offering the relief of a little humour.
“In the UK’s past, the rising of the very-recently deceased from the morgue, of the ill from their sickbeds and of the politically inactive from their slumber was only a very localised problem”
Or so we’ve always assumed…
“…and mandatory proof of citizenship (NOT RESIDENCE) and eligibility to vote.”
I hear (haven’t seen any stories myself, but then I tend to avoid local news for the sake of my own sanity) that the SNP is moving to give non-citizens the vote “officially”. Yet another reason for the 47% of the electorate who don’t bother to vote in Holyrood elections to stay away. (And the’ve the gall to talk about “mandates”.)
How’s a guy born in 1800 going to have a driving licence or photo ID? Give the old a break.
I recently moved, so I needed a new driver’s license with my new address.
I went to our Dept of Motor Vehicles at 8:30am. My state is just now switching to the TSA-approved “Real ID”, so I had to bring a certified copy of my birth certificate, a vehicle title issued to me at my new address, my old license, a paper copy of a recent utility bill, and my social security card. My passport was not required, but was “suggested.” It took four hours to go through all of the steps to get a driver’s license that reflects my new address.
I also needed to change my address at the post office.
I was there for about six minutes. I filled out one form. I showed no ID. At the end of the process, the woman pointed out that, if I put an “x” in a small box, I would automatically be registered to vote in my new location. So I did, and I am.
I think we’ve reversed our priorities somehow.
Like rape in American prisons, vote rigging by the, ironically named, Democrats (the dead voting, illegal immigrants voting – and the rest of the rape of elections) is something that everyone knows about – but is treated as a joke. But it is not funny.
Republicans aim not at winning elections – but by winning elections by such a wide margin that they will overcome the “padding” by Democrats in the big cities. This is not something that anyone should smile and nod about – it is an outrage.
Just as someone who goes to an American prison should NOT be raped, so elections should NOT be rigged (raped) by people voting who should not (legally) be voting.
I repeat – it is not funny, and such vile things need to stop.
Each American citizen (and on one else in the United States) should have one vote – and they should choose whom they wish to vote for.
That is not an extreme demand – it is a bare minimum. But the “mainstream” media do not care.
Like the education system, the “mainstream” media only care that the “Progressive” candidates win – they do NOT care if they win by voter fraud.
Even obviously rigged elections – such as Lyndon Johnson’s first United States Senate race (where the people in certain parts of Texas voted in alphabetical order – it was that openly rigged) and the 1960 Presidential election, get no OUTRAGE from the establishment elite – not in the education system, and not in the media.
In reply to llamas:
OK, i admit that my “real question” has something of the rhetorical. But it does lead to follow-up questions:
* Why, when the Republicans controlled White House, Senate, and House, did they not pass laws to prevent voter fraud? (The Supreme Court might be part of the answer.)
* Why don’t people fed up with the fraud, inflict moral pain on the fraudsters? For instance, by going around saying that the US is not a democracy, because no country where voting fraud is easy can be considered a democracy — not even if no fraud actually occurs.
Paul Marks (March 5, 2020 at 10:09 am), sometimes you have to laugh in order not to cry.
I could (if I didn’t have a day job) write a long post, illustrated with links, on vote spoofing, ballot harvesting, etc., plus backward glances at the long history of Democratic party involvement in this kind of thing – and, to be fair, some of the markedly rarer Republican instances, along with a discussion of gerrymandered boundary drawing that could be more even-handed between the parties (it is amusingly appropriate that the earliest funny-boundary instance I know of in the US, over 200 years ago, was intended to benefit the long-forgotten “Democratic Republican party”).
However the evident ability of the Democratic party to resist greater honesty in US voting is not because no post on it ever appears on the web. As I have used poems and parables to restate what has already been said in prose, so I use humour to encourage others to seek out more ways to discredit a certain insolence of denial that I see in the public domain. Your use of the word ‘rape’ to characterise voter fraud is defensible but unlikely to presuade those not already satisfied it is a real problem.
@Paul Marks,
So first of all I agree with both your points (about prison rape and the outrage of voter fraud), but the voter fraud seems to me to be a big part of the illusion of voting. The people in charge plan to keep running things they way they run them, and voting is more like a decoration, a thing to make people think that they are in control so that they don’t riot. Voting is basically a crowd control measure.
You see this in the USA today, and to a lesser extent in the UK. Trump actually wants to change things and we have seen the state’s immune system kick into high gear trying everything to bring him down. It is remarkable that he has survived. And we see it on the Democrat side where the establishment seems to have taken out Bernie (who for all of his terrible ideas would definitely change things) and replaced him with basically a zombie candidate.
This is really what they always try to do (a puppet whom they can control), but it has never been more evident in the case of Biden, who is just simply not playing with a full deck, and has the moral and ethical pliability of play doh.
Let’s not forget that both sides practice the Gerry-Mander, where you dance with the electorate by flirting with fairness, only to jilt them when it comes to voting time. Americans of both main parties have accepted this, so why should they be shocked by the dead voting?
Because voting the dead requires straight-up intentional pre-planned and hidden (in a legal if not always actual sense) criminality. Drawing contiguous same-population areas that do not specifically contravene the rules is explicitly in the public domain (very important) and is constrained by mathematics – the more brutally a gerrymandering scheme over-rewards a narrow majority the lower its tipping point (as has occasionally been seen in US politics). Specifically in the US situation, it is a two-sided and known game, so it does not over time extinguish either party overall, though it can contribute to perpetuating ins versus outs in each area and so to perpetuating rigidity and corruption. (All that said, obviously, it can be much better avoided and it would be good for the US to raise its game here.)
There is the bad and there is the very much worse.
Guido’s comment on Sadiq Khan’s policy seems relevant to this thread.
I was born in said Allegheny county… but I can assure you, there is vote fixin’ going on wherever there is voting, in the US.
I am reminded of the scientist who had to take legal action to get himself removed from the 2500 scientists whom the UN’s 2007 “time to stop arguing about whether AGW is happening” declaration claimed all agreed. A number protested and the UN ignored them but only one that I know of actually went to court. Being alive, he eventually managed, but one doubts his executors would have bothered.