An excellent article by Thomas Sowell on electoral fraud.
And there are plenty of ways to commit fraud Sowell hasn't mentioned. In 2012, a number of Philadelphia city wards reported 99% voter turnout, with 100% of the vote being for Obama. Generally, 70% is considered good turnout for an election, and historically, turnout in the inner cities has been less. So how did all these wards get 99%? It strikes me that it would be awfully easy for the people working those wards to simply check off the names of people who didn't show up to vote and simply fill out their ballots for them.
Or how hard would it be to have people whose job it is to transport paper ballots to a central counting spot to conveniently "lose" the votes for a certain candidate.
How hard would it be to rig an electronic voting machine? There were plenty of reports of people who thought they were voting for one candidate seeing that they had "voted" for another when they tried to use these machines.
How closely do the registrars check to make sure that all of the people who have died recently have been purged from the voter rolls?
As Joseph Stalin said, "It's not the people who vote that count. It's the people who count the votes."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
31 comments:
Slightly OT, the volunteers who man (can I say that?) my local polling place are all black women. They used to be so rude and hostile that I considered not voting a few times. They would, for example, routinely screw up my name. It's long and ethnic. Black Americans are amazingly provincial and can't deal with non-Anglo-Saxon names. I considered writing complaints but I didn't.
Is this not a form of voter suppression?
I am going to request an absentee ballot for the next Presidential election.
Coco
Coco --
I wouldn't quite call that voter suppression, more like voter harassment. They sound like the stereotypical women down at the DMV: not enough to keep anyone from driving, but no one looks forward to dealing with them.
What ethnicity are you?
When I voted, I voted at an elementary school. Everyone was white - no hassles voting. I noticed (for the first time) that there was a young guy sitting behind the women who took the voter i.d. info. from the voters. He had a badge of some sort on his shirt - looked like he could have been monitoring the process. The voting experience was a pleasant one.
-birdie
Birdie --
My experience on Tuesday was pleasant too. The place was staffed by local volunteers, I asked them about the CT voter ID laws, they responded pleasantly, and we even joked about it a bit.
There was an article that I read online showing different places where people voted at (e.g., a restaurant, a car dealership, etc.) - very interesting. I assumed that when people voted, they all voted within the usual buildings (e.g., libraries, schools, etc). Apparently, not so!
-birdie
Birdie --
That's a surprise to me, in my town it's all done at the schools (and the kids have the day off).
It was fascinating, seeing it via www.msn.com. There was a photo of a guy voting in a McDonald's play area. No joke. It opened my eyes to voting locales. Now, I'm more in the know. How about that!
-birdie
Birdie --
That's a general news site, I didn't see the article aout voting places there.
I guess that's good business. A lot of people must figure, well, as long as I'm here, I might as well get a Bid Mac and fries.
If you google search, unusual places to vote, different articles should appear (including the one put out by www.msn.com). Unusual places to vote: a laundromat, a pool, a barber shop, etc. As I mentioned, my eyes were opened to the different places where Americans vote. Some of the photos caused me to laugh.
-birdie
Birdie --
Just did; yes, a lot of strange enlaces.
Before I go to work, there was a photo of people voting at a Krishna temple, having colorful murals on the wall (to look at).
-birdie
Birdie --
That was meant to be "places," not "enlaces," before.
I wonder if the background art affects people's voting. You do hear of people who don't make up their minds until they go into the booth, though I have to imagine they're a very small minority.
I have no idea if where people vote affects them in any way. Just the fact that there are unusual voting locales is interesting, onces' I would never conceive of.
-birdie
I'm Ruthenian Catholic. Assuming you don't know where that is, here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruthenia
My name isn't *that* difficult. But it has a collection of consonants and vowels that presents challenges to your average AA vote volunteer.
I was joking a bit about it being suppression. I laughed at your DMV analogy. That's exactly what it is. But these ladies are volunteers. I can sort of understand being peeved at spending a life as a DMV employee.
Right now I feel a bit guilty about saying all this, as I received cheerful and kind service at my local CVS, and got a cup of coffee at a McDonald's, all by blacks. It always amazes me that people can be cheerful on jobs like that. So mea culpa.
(Catholic guilt.)
Coco
Coco --
Ha! Well, I meet blacks I like all the time too, as a matter of fact my most recent experience at the DMV was quite pleasant, thanks to a congenial and helpful black lady. (I was referring to the stereotype, not my personal experience.)
Well, I didn't know where Ruthenia was, but now I do, thanks to you. (You could have made it easy and said Ukrainian/Belarussian.) But now that I know you're Ukrainian, by descent at least, I think I've got you pegged: you're a spy for FEMEN, about whom I've written fairly extensively on this blog.
Ha. I didn't even know what FEMEN was until you mentioned it. I guess I haven't been reading your blog that long.
I'm not Ukrainian, I'm Ruthenian, or "Rusyn." IN fact, we specifically did not adopt the word "Ukrainians" to describe ourselves. Ukes are Orthodox; Ruthenians are part of a self-governing Eastern Catholic church which is in communion with Rome. It gets complicated and I frankly don't understand all the details. We're call Rusyns.
I try to read and understand the genetics bloggers but I really blank out. I do suspect that everyone from E. Europe is genetically similar but the religions are different.
Like I said, it's complicated.
Coco
Coco --
OK, gotcha, Rusyn. (Sounds like a misspelling of "Russian," which is I guess what everyone thinks.)
I like to pick on FEMEN every now and then since they're easy targets. Plus they richly deserve to be mocked.
Yes, it sounds as if you're talking about religion more than ethnicity. And yes, if you go back far enough there was plenty of admixture. You probably even have a little Mongolian in you thanks to Kublai et al. They did make it as far as the Danube.
When I had my Ancestry.com analysis done recently it was full of surprises:
http://justnotsaid.blogspot.com/2013/10/my-revised-ancestrycom-results.html
There's a good episode of Brotherhood about underhand election practices. Season 2, episode 7, 'Only a pawn...'
A big theme of the show is ethnic loyalties. Tommy, an Irish candidate, tries to get as few Hispanic people to vote as possible.
Steven --
Tip O'Neil once famously said, "All politics is local." I think a more accurate analysis would be, "All politics is racial."
Virtually all groups except whites vote consistently for whatever they perceive to be in their group's interests.
What interests should white people be voting for and why do you think they don't?
Is it mainly an immigration thing?
Steven --
If white people voted what was in their best interests, they'd vote against immigration, yes, and also against affirmative action, against disparate impact, for lower taxes, against any sort of forced integration of the sort exemplified by the suburbs having to accept Section 8 housing. They'd vote for less welfare and Medicaid, and for cutting off benefits to illegal aliens. They'd vote for stricter law and order-type bills, and for victims' rights as opposed to criminals' rights.
Some white people vote this way, but a lot don't. With every other group, it's assumed they'll vote in their own interests; if whites do, it's considered evil.
Don't the republican party have some of those policies?
I'm surprised illegal aliens are able to get welfare. It seems commonsensical that you'd have to be a citizen of a country with a national insurance number to be able to claim benefits. I think that's the case in Britain.
Don't poor white people get most of the welfare, even though they have lower rates of unemployment? They'd arguably be shooting themselves in the foot by cutting off welfare for non-whites. Also, I think in Britain more of the welfare budget goes on pensions than unemployment.
I wouldn't want to remove the safety net. Too many ordinary good people would end up homeless.
Steven --
The Republican party leans more towards those policies, but not in their entirety, and they've been buffaloed into silence on a lot of them for fear of being accused of racism.
No, illegal aliens can get all sorts of benefits in this country, starting with hospital care. Hospitals by law are forbidden to turn away anyone, and so illegals can just go to emergency rooms and get care and not pay.
No one has ever suggested cutting off all welfare or abolishing the safety net, merely making it so welfare is less attractive than a minimum wage job. There've been all sorts of studies which show that if you're savvy and know how to milk the system, you can have a lifestyle equivalent to someone who makes something like 45k a year. This includes basic welfare, Section 8 housing vouchers, AFDC, EBC, etc.
Perhaps illegals should be deported, surely they shouldn't be entitled to unemployment benefits, but I wouldn't want to turn them away from emergency rooms if they are suffering a medical emergency. It seems callous just to let somebody have a heart attack or bleed to death because they are an illegal. They are just people who somewhat desperately sought a better life in a foreign land. I wouldn't want to be in an economic situation in which becoming an illegal alien in a foreign land seems like a good option.
I totally agree in principle that having a job should give you a better lifestyle than life on benefits & enough of a difference to provide an incentive to work.
Perhaps part of the solution is for minimum wage jobs to pay more- as the living wage people advocate. Is it too much to ask for the workers- say Walmart workers- to get a greater share of the wealth they create by their labour?
The 6 Walmart heirs have as much wealth as the bottom 41% of Americans. I would never advocate complete equality as there must be reasonable incentives, but this level of inequality seems crazy and unacceptable to me. (See also this very good illustration of inequality in America: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM)
Perhaps we should look at this instead of focusing on the unemployed. Its convenient for the mega rich if our attention is on those with the least wealth instead of those with the most.
While critics of welfare focus on fraudsters and the like, a lot of the people on unemployment benefits can't find jobs. There simply aren't as many full time jobs as there are working age citizens and the shortfall is significant. Why punish those who can't find work, through no fault of their own, with a very austere lifestyle?
If you can offer a job to everybody, then you would be justified to be harsh towards those who refuse. But a certain amount of unemployment is desirable under capitalism as it provides a reserve of cheap labour and takes power away from workers because they can be fired and replaced.
If society (or at least the business class) deems it desirable to have a certain amount of unemployed people, it probably should at least look after those who are unemployed. (I doubt most people on benefits are living a lifestyle equivalent to 45k/a)
Lastly, if you actually look at the budget, only 12% goes on safety net programs. Compare that to 24% on social security, 22% on medicare, medicaid & CHIP, and 19% on defense and international security assistance (basically military spending). If you want to eliminate the budget deficit, diminishing the safety net might not be the best way to do it.
Steven --
No one is advocating turning away dying people from the emergency ward. But there are people who use the emergency ward for ordinary medical care because they know they won't have to pay for it. And why should Americans have to pay the medical bills for Mexicans? Personally, I think we should treat them and then send Mexico the bill.
I have nothing against raising the minimum wage, and wrote something to that effect earlier in the blog. But keep in mind, one of the first arguments against it is that it will result in more unemployment, which is true. But I also think it has to be done in conjunction with making welfare more attractive.
You keep talking as if I'm entirely against a safety net. I'm not. But the reality of the situation over here is that there are families which have just planned on putting themselves on the dole for a long time, there are mothers who have more babies just because they know it means more federal aid, and there are lots of people who spend their welfare benefits on cigarettes, alcohol, tattoos, and other non-necessities. And Obama has quietly gutted the workfare requirements; I think that i fan able=bodied person can't get a job and needs welfare, fine, but he should be expected to do some sort of work for the government to receive those benefits.
Also, you talk as if social security, medicaid, and medicare are NOT safety net programs; that is exactly what they are.
I realise you don't want to eradicate the safety net but you want to reduce how much people get.
I notice that when conservatives criticise the welfare system with the aim of reducing or dismantling it, these are the themes:
1) people on welfare get too much and are able to live quite lavishly.
2) people on welfare are gaming the system and have no intention of working.
3) these people are to blame for budget deficits and the answer is cuts to welfare.
These are what I tried to address.
1) Unless America is radically different, people on benefits are usually poor and struggling. I suspect that most Americans on welfare aren't living 45k/a lifestyles.
The reality is that the struggles of people on benefits are usually not appreciated by people in positions of privilege who are far removed from them. They might smoke cigarettes and drink but this would usually be at the expense of something more important- a bad decision but not necessarily indicative of them getting way too much money. It might be one of the few pleasures in their miserable lives.
2) You can focus on the leeches, gamers, the habitually lazy and dependent but are they really the majority of people on welfare? If they are then I shall stand corrected.
3) they did not cause the financial crisis and other areas of the budget are more substantial.
If people are made to work for their benefits, what work could they do? I've seen schemes like this in Britain and it involved companies using these people and therefore not hiring proper workers.
I'm not dismissing your idea- it may be a good one as long as it is dignified and fairly compensated.
I'm also not sure if its really a white interest to reduce the welfare state since they are probably in absolute numbers the biggest users of it. Its more of a rich white interest. It would be a shame if ethnic diversity undermined the collectivist ethic that welfare is based on.
Steven --
I'd agree with your #1 and #2, but not with #3. I don't think anybody thinks that welfare alone is to blame for the budget deficits. But keep in mind, there are all sorts of hidden costs associated with the communities where a substantial percentage of the population lives on welfare. There are extra costs for police (more needed) and firemen (believe it or not). There are the government salaries of all those whose jobs it is to help disburse those monies. (And there are a lot more of them than you'd think.)
I jet saw an article today about how, adjusted for both inflation and population, welfare costs have risen 254% from 1977 to now. Yet poverty is not down at all:
http://www.ruthfullyyours.com/2014/11/03/the-case-against-liberal-compassion-william-voegeli/
There are plenty of people who need welfare and regard it as a temporary crutch until they get back on their feet, but there are also plenty of people who just see it as their more or less permanent means of subsistence. And if there are any of the latter, it's too much. The worst part is the mothers who know having more kids will result in more AFDC: that, more than anything, increases the welfare rolls.
There are all sorts of things people on welfare could do, starting with helping clean up the streets, painting, any sort of unskilled government or municipal-related work which needs doing. as far as "dignity," I'm not concerned with that. Any sort of honest labor is more dignified than just being on the dole. And as far as being compensated, they ARE being compensated already, with their welfare benefits.
It's definitely more difficult to have a welfare state in a multiethnic society, as one group will inevitably do more giving and the other more taking.
I think it might be a good idea what you propose but my only requirement would be that they only work the number of hours necessary to earn their welfare based on minimum wage. If welfare is as generous as it is said to be, this should make it a full time job anyway.
If you start having below minimum wage labour, apart from arguably not being fair on the person, its likely they would end up doing some of the jobs a person would have been paid for (street cleaners, grass cutters maybe some admin etc). The government would be sneaky like that and companies would love it if they could get their hands on some of that cheap labour too.
I also agree that the welfare expenditure is growing in the states and this is a legitimate concern.
What do you think of libertarian Charles Murray's Plan? (http://www.amazon.co.uk/In-Our-Hands-Replace-Welfare/dp/0844742236) He wants to give a basic guaranteed income of $10,000 to every citizen over 21 and then basically eliminate the welfare state. He calculates that given the rising welfare bill, by a certain year this would constitute a huge saving.
This might even solve the problem of women having babies to get welfare since they wouldn't be eligible til 21. I'm not sure what would be done for the ones who do have babies.
p.s. I found that in feb 2011 (when unemployment was at a high), 2.8 million people had not worked for 2 years or more (UK working age population is 38 million). 2 million of those were sick or disabled, 0.5 million were single mothers, a few hundred thousand were carers. Only 3% were officially unemployed job seekers.
That's 84,000 job seekers who had been out of work for 2 years or more, or 0.2% of the working age population ie 1 in 500.
80% of people who claim unemployment benefit are back in work within about a year.
Of course, there are those 0.5 million single mothers (1.3% of working age people) and I wonder how many of those had babies because they knew the state would act as father/provider.
Steven --
I agree, governments shouldn't make warfare recipients work at a level which would equate to less than minimum wage for the benefits they're receiving.
I'd never heard of Charles Murray's plan before but off the top of my head it sounds like a great idea. (He's is basically shunned by the mainstream media ever since he dared to mention race and IQ in the same sentence in his book The Bell Curve years ago.) You're right, that plan would also discourage, or at least not encourage, welfare recipients from having more babies in order to get more welfare.
Another big problem with welfare, in particular people who are on disability, is that some of them are not truly disabled. The NY Post occasionally runs articles about various former Long island Railroad workers, or former cops or firemen, who are receiving disability for bad backs and the like, while currently competing in triathlons or even mixed martial arts. They do this with the aid of corrupt doctors (who also scam Medicaid and Medicare).
Yeah disability benefit fraud is a problem. In the past in the UK, all you needed was a doctors note which was easy to obtain and people went on for years like that. I can think of two or three people I know who were on it. Now the pendulum has swung in the other direction and the assessments disqualify many people who really are not able to work. They rarely find the right balance.
The workfare scheme you advocate basically means giving people government jobs, which I think is a good thing if the private sector isn't creating enough jobs for everyone.
I like Murray too. Here's his paper 'Guaranteed income as a replacement for the welfare state'. Its a good intro or overview.
http://www.fljs.org/sites/www.fljs.org/files/publications/Murray.pdf
Post a Comment