State Representative Debbie Riddle (R – 150) loves the word ‘integrity.’ She was also a big supporter of recent Bill HB 16, which would have required Texas voters to present proof of identification. “Y’see, that’s very important because the very freedom of our nation is based on the integrity of our ballot box,” she said. “And if things are so lax that fraudulent voting can occur, then that means your vote can be stolen. And when that’s done, your voice is silenced.”

But Rep. Riddle herself has indulged in voter fraud on multiple occasions, voting for her absent colleagues in the House, thus silencing their voice, and by extension, the voices of anyone who’s ever voted for them.

In May, 2007, the CBS 42 Investigates program ran a video showing Texas state legislators voting multiple times on a single bill – casting votes for absent colleagues, in blatant violation of House rules. The official House rules state that “Any member found guilty by the House of knowingly voting for another member on the voting machine shall be subject to discipline deemed appropriate by the House.” When asked about such fraudulent voting by state legislators, the spokesperson for Speaker of the House Tom Craddick – whose job is to make sure rules are followed – simply shrugged her shoulders and dismissed it as unimportant. CBS 42 could not find a single instance where lawmakers had been ever been disciplined for voting more than once. Apparently “appropriate” is another word like “integrity” that must mean something different in Texas than it does elsewhere.

You might think this is just the usual Republican driven chicanery, but sadly, no. While Republicans are busy casting votes for their Republican colleagues, Democrats play catch-up scrambling around desks to vote for their colleagues as well. Sometime, this multiple voting cuts across party lines – Republican Will Hartnett can be seen reaching across an empty desk to vote for Democrat Rene Oliveira. Democrat Jim McReynolds votes for Republican Kirk England, and Republican John Davis votes for Democrat Rick Noriega. Whether or not they voted in the manner their absent colleagues may have wished is unknown, but it’s unlikely. Winning or losing in the Texas legislature seems more about who happens to be there to play musical chairs than any valid political position on a bill.

While the legislature is broadcast on cable television, voters have no idea this is happening, because the cameras conveniently cut away when it’s time for lawmakers to vote, effectively hiding their behaviour from all but the handful of capitol visitors watching from the third floor gallery. Debbie “it’s all about integrity” Riddle has lamely attempted to explain away such transgressions as being “necessary.”

“We have a lot of amendments. We don’t have lunch breaks, dinner breaks, restroom breaks.”

Really? Then where are all your missing colleagues?

Voter fraud was a big issue in this election. And to be fair, this video is nearly five years old. I did invite both the Texas Democratic Party and the Texas Republican Party to comment on whether or not anything was ever done since that video was broadcast on CBS 42, but so far... *crickets.* So I rather suspect not.

With all the fear-mongering this election about voter fraud, it seems we have more to fear from our duly elected politicians’ underhanded scheming than anything done by ordinary citizens.

Going viral fast on YouTube, a couple voting early this morning posted cellphone video of their touch-screen voting machine registering a vote for "Romney" when they select "Obama".

My wife and I went to the voting booths this morning before work. There were 4 older ladies running the show and 3 voting booths that are similar to a science fair project in how they fold up. They had an oval VOTE logo on top center and a cartridge slot on the left that the volunteers used to start your ballot.

I initially selected Obama but Romney was highlighted. I assumed it was being picky so I deselected Romney and tried Obama again, this time more carefully, and still got Romney. Being a software developer, I immediately went into troubleshoot mode. I first thought the calibration was off and tried selecting Jill Stein to actually highlight Obama. Nope. Jill Stein was selected just fine. Next I deselected her and started at the top of Romney's name and started tapping very closely together to find the 'active areas'. From the top of Romney's button down to the bottom of the black checkbox beside Obama's name was all active for Romney. From the bottom of that same checkbox to the bottom of the Obama button (basically a small white sliver) is what let me choose Obama. Stein's button was fine. All other buttons worked fine.

I asked the voters on either side of me if they had any problems and they reported they did not. I then called over a volunteer to have a look at it. She him hawed for a bit then calmly said "It's nothing to worry about, everything will be OK." and went back to what she was doing. I then recorded this video.

There is a lot of speculation that the footage is edited. I'm not a video guy, but if it's possible to prove whether a video has been altered or not, I will GLADLY provide the raw footage to anyone who is willing to do so. The jumping frames are a result of the shitty camera app on my Android phone, nothing more.

Responding to Right-Wing cries over "screen calibration", the author of the video points to the fact he also tried selecting other candidates and encountered no such problem. The actual cause is from the "hot" region for "Romney" being overly large and the "Obama" hot-spot being "only a sliver" according to the author of the video.

Stay vigilant folks. It's going to be a long night.

You know how every time they're in control, Republicans grow the government and run into the ground to prove that government is inefficient and bloated? Well, I think it's time to realize that the GOP is now determined to prove that their cries of voter fraud are true...because they're the ones committing it.

This is really maddening:

On Monday I saw a really interesting story coming out of Harrisonburg on Facebook:

"I just saw a guy throw a bag of trash in my cardboard dumpster and speed off. I went to get the bag and throw it in the trash dumpster. In the bag was a folder containing FILLED OUT VIRGINIA VOTER REGISTRATION FORMS!! I called the Harrisonburg Registrars office and they sent the police who said they really didn't know what to do in a case like this because its never happened before. The police took the forms and left. I'm really concerned because today is the last day in Virginia to register to vote and if these forms are tied up while trying to figure out what to do, will these people be allowed to vote??? I'm tagging you Lowell since I thought you might want to follow up on this. I spoke with Debbie at the Harrisonburg office and police spoke with Doug at the Rockingham county registrars office" Who would drive up to a dumpster on the registration deadline day to throw away completed voter registration forms and why?
The car that drove up was a black Toyota Camry with Pennsylvania license plates. Who would be in the Valley from Pennsylvania and have a bunch of completed voter registration forms that they wanted to destroy?

Once this story hit Facebook, a number of people pointed out to the person who witnessed this crime that the state GOP "Victory Office" was just a couple blocks away. Yesterday afternoon, guess what car was parked in front of the office?

Yep, a black Toyota Camry from Pennsylvania.

I guess when you've got so little to run on and you know you can't win legitimately, the only thing left is to commit a federal crime and cheat voters of their right to vote. That "ends justify the means" attitude perfectly sums up Republican logic.

But wait, there's more:

UPDATE: Sources close to the Rockingham County Sheriff's Office are telling me that Strategic Allied Consulting is involved in this. This is the same group that was in the national news two weeks ago for their "registration" drive in Florida that had forms with made up voters.

Even more interesting. Strategic Allied Consulting shares a Virginia headquarters with two other notables.

#1- American Crossroads- the superpac founded by Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie

#2- The office of Virginia State Senator Jill Holtzman Vogel.

Oh Karl...how unsurprising to find your name connected to this. I'm gonna go out on a limb right now and say that Virginia's wingnut Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli will do absolutely nothing about this kind of blatant crime, but he sure was at the forefront of making one of the more stringent voter ID laws in the nation.

UPDATE: An arrest has been made.

Colin Small, a 31-year-old resident of Phoenixville, Pa., worked for Pinpoint, a company hired to register voters on behalf of the Republican Party of Virginia. Prosecutors charged him with four counts of destruction of voter registration applications, eight counts of failing to disclose voter registration applications and one count of obstruction of justice.

Rockingham County Sheriff Bryan Hutcheson’s office said there was no indication that the activity was widespread in their jurisdiction and said the conduct “appears to be limited in nature.” His office said there is a possibility that additional charges may be filed.

And his LinkedIn account lists his job as Grassroots Field Director for the RNC. The sheriff might want to consider that this goes beyond a single local incident.

This really is laughable. Apparently some of these racist wingnuts believe their own lies and think there are thousands of fraudulent voters lurking in minority neighborhoods? Oh well, better that they're spending their money on this crap than getting out the vote:

COLUMBUS, Ohio --The sign says "voter fraud is a felony," which it is. The problem is that many of the billboards are in minority neighborhoods.

Civil rights and labor groups have denounced the billboards as an attempt to intimidate minority voters.

"Intimidating billboards that point out voter fraud are appearing in predominantly African American communities in Ohio, despite little to no evidence that voter fraud exists," said Ohio AFL-CIO Secretary Treasurer Pierrette “Petee” Talley in a statement.

Clear Channel vice president of marketing, Jim Cullinan said, "the signs are accurate and are not an attack ads and that is why the signs will remain."

NBC4: The name on the bottom of the ad says, "Private Family Foundation" who are they?

"The advertiser asked to remain anonymous," said Cullinan.

NBC4: Is that a common practice?

"No, someone in sales made a mistake, but we have signed a contract and cannot remove the ad," he said.

In other words, someone waved a wad of cash under their noses and oops, forgot to get a name!

Rick Hasen, a professor of law and political science at the University of California, Irvine, is the author of “The Voting Wars: From Florida 2000 to the Next Election Meltdown." He has a Talking Points Memo piece on the methodical creation of the alleged voter fraud epidemic -- and how shamelessly conservatives lie:

Hans von Spakovsky, one of the charter members of the Fraudulent Fraud Squad, claimed that there was such “recent” evidence of a problem with impersonation fraud, and he cited to a grand jury report issued in 1984 by the Brooklyn (N.Y.) district attorney’s office. (Put aside the fact that 1984 is not so recent.)

I asked von Spakovsky for a copy of the report. I heard nothing from him, even though he had contacted me in the past pitching items to include on my Election Law Blog. I wrote to the president of the Heritage Foundation, where von Spakovsky works, asking for the report, and noting that good scholarship requires that scholars make their data available for verification. Silence. TPM ran a story on it. Silence.

A law librarian at UC Irvine finally was able to track down a copy of the report from the district attorney’s office. And guess what? The grand jury found lots of shenanigans by election officials and party officials (including party officials hiding in the ceiling of the men’s room of the Brooklyn Board of Elections to change voter registration after dark). But virtually no cases of voter impersonation fraud and nothing done without the collusion of election officials.

But by then, von Spakovsky had moved on. In a syndicated column, he wrote of an election allegedly stolen by at least 50 illegal votes cast by Somalis voting in Kansas. When I pointed out on my blog that the court examining these claims found no proof of illegal voting and that the election took place in Missouri, not Kansas, he corrected the column’s reference to Kansas, but did nothing to remove his discredited claim of fraud in the election.

More recently, von Spakovsky and his co-author John Fund wrote a book in which they rely onwholly discredited allegations that fraudulent voting was responsible for Al Franken’s win in Minnesota over Norm Coleman in the recount and litigation over the disputed Minnesota U.S. Senate race.

This is the modus operandi of the Fraudulent Fraud Squad. Use false and exaggerated claims. Don’t correct the record when proven wrong. Use a bait-and-switch on fraud allegations to justify laws which don’t prevent fraud. Make people believe voter fraud is an epidemic when it’s not. And call those who point out the truth “vote fraud deniers.”

And speaking of, it sounds like Florida Gov. Rick Scott plans to impose early-voting limits in the Keys -- even though the Republican elections supervisor is fighting him.

I can't imagine why Scott Brown thinks poor people wouldn't vote for him!

They don't even bother to hide their disdain for the hoi polloi anymore, do they? The fact that a senator - a Massachusetts senator - can equate registering welfare recipents to vote with systematic voter fraud just leaves me shaking my head, because he's using this as a right-wing dog whistle to wingnuts who insist only the worthy (i.e. employed) should get to vote:

Sen. Scott Brown — Massachusetts moderate — has just released one of the most brazen anti-franchise statements I’ve seen from a prominent Republican this year.

Apparently the daughter of his challenger, Elizabeth Warren, is the chairwoman of one of a few voting rights groups contracted by the state of Massachuetts to send voter registration forms to people who weren’t offered the chance to register when they applied to receive welfare benefits. That was a violation of federal law, and Massachusetts is sending these people registration forms as part of a legal settlement. And this makes Scott Brown really mad, because if you help welfare recipients vote, they’ll vote against Scott Brown, probably.

I want every legal vote to count, but it’s outrageous to use taxpayer dollars to register welfare recipients as part of a special effort to boost one political party over another. This effort to sign up welfare recipients is being aided by Elizabeth Warren’s daughter and it’s clearly designed to benefit her mother’s political campaign. It means that I’m going to have to work that much harder to get out my pro-jobs, pro-free enterprise message.

It’s actually a “special effort” to comport with federal law, as I said, but the fact that helping legally qualified citizens register to vote is now considered improper is startling. Or at least that a non-insane Republican said as much out loud is startling. This goes beyond phony accusations of voter fraud: Brown is outraged that his opponent’s daughter is working for an organization making it easier for people to legally vote. Because they’re poor.

If this doesn't get you to donate to Elizabeth Warren's Blue America page, I don't know what will.

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I'm going to keep putting up this video until Pennsylvania ditches their awful Voter ID law. It's one of the worst in the nation and the DOJ is now investigating it under the Voting Rights Act.

As well they should, especially given the state's response to the DOJ's inquiry. Note well this section:

“There have been no investigations or prosecutions of in-person voter fraud in Pennsylvania; and the parties do not have direct personal knowledge of any such investigations or prosecutions in other states,” the statement reads.

According to the agreement, the state “will not offer any evidence in this action that in-person voter fraud has in fact occurred in Pennsylvania and elsewhere,” nor will it “offer argument or evidence that in-person voter fraud is likely to occur in November 2012 in the absence of the Photo ID law.”

No investigations. No prosecutions. Not even one. As has been said over and over and over, Voter ID is a solution without a problem, and so now Pennsylvania has passed a Voter ID law which could bar as many as 700,000 legal voters from casting a ballot. Seven. Hundred. Thousand.

As you reflect on that, you should hear the echo of Turzai's raspy voice saying "...which is going to allow Gov. Romney to win...which is going to allow Gov. Romney to win...which is going to allow Gov. Romney to win...done...done...done..."

You'd think the wingers would figure out that James O'Keefe makes them look like fools every time he posts another one of his "videos." You'd think they might consider not pimping those videos like they're real when they're so easy to debunk. You'd think.

This time, it's North Carolina under fire, but O'Keefe ridiculously claims voter fraud when the only fraud is O'Keefe and his bogus claims. This time around, O'Keefe features a "dead voter" and a voter who he claims is illegally registered to vote because he was not a citizen at the time he was called for jury duty. Unfortunately for O'Keefe, he became a citizen in the 80s, a fact that was easily verifiable before publishing the video.

As for O'Keefe's dead guy, it turns out James forgot that "Jr." at the end of a guy's name means he's the son of the dead guy and also happens to be a very much alive registered voter.

Via Media Matters:

Yes, as multiple obituaries for Bolton note, he was survived by, among others, his son Michael Gordon Bolton, Jr. Public records searches using the Nexis database confirm that Bolton Jr. was registered to vote at the same address given to the poll worker by the O'Keefe operative.

This isn't the only error of this sort O'Keefe made. As ThinkProgress noted, the "non-citizen" voter supposedly exposed by the video is actually a naturalized citizen.

The best screw-up of all is the one where O'Keefe punks the Daily Caller, Breitbart.com and Michelle Malkin. I love it when one of their own hangs them out to dry so thoroughly. In the opener of his ten-minute long video, O'Keefe's minions are walking up a driveway to "prove" that a non-citizen has voted in the North Carolina primary.

Via ThinkProgress Justice:

Now, it turns out that the second “non-citizen,” William Romero, is actually a citizen as well, according to his family.

The video opens with O’Keefe’s cameraman walking up Romero’s driveway and confronting a member of his family about whether he is a citizen. O’Keefe points to court records from 2010 where Romero was excused from jury duty because he was not a citizen at the time. Therefore, as O’Keefe argues, Romero’s voter registration dated December 5, 2011 is fraudulent because Romero “is not a United States citizen.”

Oops! That calendar can be a pesky thing. It turns out Romero became a citizen in early 2011, and registered to vote because that's what good citizens in this country do: they vote.

In fact, Romero’s family told ThinkProgress he became a naturalized citizen in early 2011.

What’s more, Romero’s family told ThinkProgress that they had began receiving harassing telephone calls two weeks before the incident in the video asking if Romero was a citizen. They confirmed to the caller — it’s unclear whether they were speaking with O’Keefe himself or another individual — that Romero is indeed a citizen. Nevertheless, O’Keefe proceeded to ambush the family at their home and publish this video claiming he’s not a citizen.

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You'll be pleased to know that the "fair and balanced" news channel is hot on the trail of voter fraud trials. Well, at least, a voter fraud trial that involves Democrats. Megyn Kelly is anxious for everyone to be informed about a trial taking place in Troy, NY involving absentee ballots and Democratic officials. It's an ugly case, and several officials have pled guilty already.

But here's what Fox News fails to mention: It was caught. Caught, without voter ID laws in place. That's an inconvenient fact that is worth pointing out.

This report from Megyn Kelly also failed to emphasize another fact: There are some serious cases of Republican election/voter fraud taking place now. Therefore, I've decided to balance Ms. Kelly's seriously tilted report. Here is a small list:

• Indiana's Secretary of State and chief voting officer, Bill White, was removed from office after it was determined he was not eligible to be on the ballot. Further, he is charged with three counts of voter fraud.
• Voter suppression in Maryland in 2010, where Republicans paid for 100,000 robocalls to Democratic households telling them to sit back and relax and not vote, because the election was sewn up. A Republican operative was convicted in that case.
• Clay County, KY, where GOP officials were convicted of massive voter fraud and sentenced to 156 years in prison as a result.
• James O'Keefe's little sting operation in New Hampshire, where he sent operatives into New Hampshire precincts for the express purpose of committing voter fraud in order to prove fraud could be committed, after a mystery benefactor ponied up $50,000 for him to do it.

Yet, crickets from Ms. Megyn on these incidents. Fair and balanced? Only if balance means tilting reporting to try and demonstrate Roger Ailes' theory that Democrats do things Republicans have done for years and years and years.

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James O'Keefe could use a few lessons in logic. He was so determined to get his "big scoop" on voter fraud that he may have had his goons commit voter fraud in order to prove it.

TPM Muckraker:

It was one of the few — if not the only — coordinated efforts to attempt in-person voter fraud, and it was pulled off by affiliates of conservative activist James O’Keefe at polling places in New Hampshire Tuesday night. All of it part of an attempt to prove the need for voter ID laws that voting rights experts say have a unfair impact on minority voters.

Now election law experts tell TPM that O’Keefe’s allies could face criminal charges on both the federal and state level for procuring ballots under false names, and that his undercover sting doesn’t demonstrate a need for voter ID laws at all.

Federal law bans not only the casting of, but the “procurement” of ballots “that are known by the person to be materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent under the laws of the State in which the election is held.”

It still amazes me that O'Keefe is allowed to do this as a tax-exempt entity. Here is how he describes his "sting" operation on the YouTube page with the published video:

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