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talkpoliticsBack in July, I posted a video a woman took while trying to get her son a voting ID in Wisconsin. At the time what I emphasized was the fact that the DMV apparently considered “bank activity” a requirement for voting. But there was more to the conversation. Given information that’s recently linked about about DMV employees being instructed NOT to offer certain information, it’s worth seeing again. The pertinent part of the conversation begins at about the 4.30 mark:
In fact, it was recently revealed that the instructions came from a top Department of Transportation official Steve Kreaiser:
If the DMV officials in the video seem a wee bit ambivalent to you, it’s probably not your imagination. Recently a Wisconsin state employee was fired for sending out an email calling people so spread the word about the free IDs.
An interview with the employee can be heard here.
Whether or not the employee was wise to do what he did, this raises questions about the motives behind this voter ID law. Why would specific instructions go out for DMV officials not to offer information that would prevent applicants from essentially paying for the right to vote?
Crossposted from Thoughtcrimes
Woman: If someone were to just say thet needed a state ID card, would they know it was free, if it was for voting?
Man at DMV: Uhhh, unless they tell us it was for voting, we charge ‘em. Cause it’s….
Woman: Why is that, because with the new law, the Voter ID bill…
Man at DMV: It’s going to discourage them.
Woman: They’re…It’s supposed to be free.
Man at DMV: If it’s for…
Woman: So why wouldn’t you tell them that, right from the start, “Voter ID is free.”
Man at DMV: They’re the same card, so, unless you come in and specifically request it, we charge you for it. Like, let’s say you’re 20 and you’re going on a trip. You may not vote, so we’re still going to charge them for that card.
Woman: But would you ask them? Would you say “is this for voting, or…
Man at DMV: If they check the box, so…um, it’s, you know, one of them where… They shouldn’t even be doing any of it, but it’s one of them where they wanted to make this law, and now it’s going to affect a lot of people, so if it’s for voting, we do it for free, but we don’t know that they’re going to use it for voting.
Woman: Why don’t you have that as a, you know, I would like to ask your supervisor, why don’t you ask people, “Is this for voting? Is this ID for voting or is it for something else?”
Man at DMV: They put it on here and that satisifies the state statute so, um you know I can’t really answer that question.
Woman: I would like to ask your supervisor that question.
Man at DMV: Okay, I’ll go get him...
Supervisor: They need to ask for it. It’s something that is available but they should ask for it.
Woman: But why not ask them, “Is this a voter ID card or a regular ID card?”
Supervisor: Because… the, the, pol… (seems at a loss)
Woman: I mean, have you been given instructions?
Supervisor: Yeah, the problem, the instruction is that if someone comes in and says “I need an ID card to go and vote,” that it’s free. If it is an original issuance or a renewal. But if someone comes in and they’ve lost their ID, it’s not within its renewal period and they need a replacement, then we have to charge for it. So a replacement, a duplicate...
Woman: But couldn’t you ask them, “Is this a renewal or a replacement or is this for a Voter ID?"
Supervisor: Our instruction is to let them ask.
Woman: And so who gave you that direction?
Supervisor: Well, it’s from the powers-that-be.
Woman: Who would that be?
Supervisor: Well, that would be, the next step in my chain of command would be Tracy Howard…
In fact, it was recently revealed that the instructions came from a top Department of Transportation official Steve Kreaiser:
While you should certainly help customers who come in asking for a free ID to check the appropriate box, you should refrain from offering the free version to customers who do not ask for it.
If the DMV officials in the video seem a wee bit ambivalent to you, it’s probably not your imagination. Recently a Wisconsin state employee was fired for sending out an email calling people so spread the word about the free IDs.
An interview with the employee can be heard here.
Whether or not the employee was wise to do what he did, this raises questions about the motives behind this voter ID law. Why would specific instructions go out for DMV officials not to offer information that would prevent applicants from essentially paying for the right to vote?
Crossposted from Thoughtcrimes
(no subject)
Date: 10/9/11 15:24 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 10/9/11 15:28 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 10/9/11 16:03 (UTC)So you want to fradulently vote. Your state doesn't require an ID? It's easy!
1) Anytime before an election, pull the voter rolls. It's public information, accessable to everyone. If you're involved with a campaign, you may even have a Voter Vault-style database available to you.
2) Sort the data to note people on the rolls who are of the following:
a) Possibly dead or moved or otherwise unable to vote.(remember, attempts to clean the voter rolls are consistently opposed by many as attempts to disenfranchise otherwise legal voters)
b) People who are legal, registered voters, but never vote.
c) People who are legal, registered voters, but only vote in major elections. Say, once every 4 years for President.
3) Get people involved to assert that they are a certain person who fits 2a-2c.
4) Send people over to the polling place toward the end of the day, preferably after the post-work rush as poll watchers, and have them report back to whoever's in charge as to who hasn't voted yet.
5) Send people over to vote as those people who probably won't be voting.
Congratulations! You're successfully committed voter fraud!
Now, here's the rub:
1) The government generally will not investigate this sort of fraud because it largely goes unnoticed. They're choosing voters that are unlikely to vote, so no one will complain. Sometimes people catch it (http://www.newsobserver.com/2011/09/09/1472583/one-voters-story.html), and I recall a case from the 1980s in NYC that dealt with this directly, but these are the exceptions, obviously.
2) The government investigators will not contact every person who voted after an election to see if they actually voted, either. So there's no way to find out if John Smith, who never votes but was registered when he renewed his license, has suddenly shown an interest in a local election.
Voter ID laws exist to ensure that this sort of activity can't happen. Unless the government is actually willing to investigate this sort of activity, we'll never know how truly widespread it is, but it's way, WAY too easy not to be concerned with.
(no subject)
Date: 10/9/11 16:51 (UTC)But...well, turns out I was wrong and one of the twenty people charged with voter fraud in the 2008 Wisconsin election was indeed casting a dead person's vote (http://badgerherald.com/news/2011/02/01/doj_task_force_charg.php), which of course is an identity issue. That's one person discovered after a voter fraud task force combed through eleven counties, so regardless of whether it's generally investigated, in this case it was, and these were the results. Requiring ID for over 5.5 million people because one person in that group was discovered to have committed identity-related voter fraud does not seem like a logical sequence of events to me, I don't know about you. Twice as many people voted twice, a problem not prevented by this law. Six times as many committed "voter registration misconduct"--apparently by lying about citizenship status, though I'm just trying to read between the lines on that one so I may be wrong--which is not prevented by this law. Eleven times as many were convicted felons who voted, a problem not prevented by this law.
And, once this law is put in place anyway, not spreading the news that it costs $0 to comply with it and vote--indeed, firing employees for attempting to do so--sounds less logical still. Still haven't heard a good reason for this; the extra work and confusion you claim it will generate from people who think a voter ID functions as a regular ID could not be easier to avoid.
(no subject)
Date: 10/9/11 16:59 (UTC)And, once this law is put in place anyway, not spreading the news that it costs $0 to comply with it and vote--indeed, firing employees for attempting to do so--sounds less logical still.
That this was a fairly national issue tells me this isn't an issue of "spreading the news."
Still haven't heard a good reason for this; the extra work and confusion you claim it will generate from people who think a voter ID functions as a regular ID could not be easier to avoid.
You have a much higher faith in humanity than I.
(no subject)
Date: 10/9/11 18:51 (UTC)But not in Wisconsin. They looked, and this is what they found. (Not sure what's so impossible about comparing signatures, by the way.) I'm not sure how to put this more plainly. This is actual data on the pervasiveness of identity-related voter fraud in Wisconsin, discovered by people looking specifically for it. It finds that it is not a big problem, and that other forms of fraud not covered by this law were as much as eleven times more common in the 2008 election (and still not a big problem).
That this was a fairly national issue tells me this isn't an issue of "spreading the news."
If by "fairly national issue" you mean "a nationally covered news story," it wasn't as far as I've seen. The law was, and now this discovery of an officially mandated ban on telling people about the free voter ID without being prompted by them, but in between I can't find any big story about the introduction/existence of the free voter ID. Feel free to provide any; I could be wrong.
You have a much higher faith in humanity than I.
On the other hand, I'm not the one who trusts five and a half million citizens to be up on every detail of a three-month-old law when the place they'd be most likely to learn the details has employees instructed not to tell them.
(no subject)
Date: 10/9/11 19:06 (UTC)So the news hit the other 49 states, but not the state it involves.
This is actual data on the pervasiveness of identity-related voter fraud in Wisconsin, discovered by people looking specifically for it. It finds that it is not a big problem, and that other forms of fraud not covered by this law were as much as eleven times more common in the 2008 election (and still not a big problem).
But, again, they did not do searches for this sort of fraud. You're comparing unlike things.
(no subject)
Date: 10/9/11 19:48 (UTC)What news do you mean? That sentence was about the voter fraud investigation conducted in Wisconsin regarding the 2008 elections. You said "[Identity-related voter fraud is] definitely more widespread than that," and I replied that it wasn't in Wisconsin, because they investigated and this is what they found.
But, again, they did not do searches for this sort of fraud. You're comparing unlike things.
I'd take issue with the "again" part but why pick nits. Where did you hear that the task force didn't investigate the type of voter fraud that involves impersonation/identity theft?
(no subject)
Date: 10/9/11 19:57 (UTC)They investigated one instance, not any sort of wide canvassing of identity fraud. They were looking for one specific person, and we don't know their methodogy.
(no subject)
Date: 10/9/11 20:02 (UTC)That's the investigation I'm talking about, anyway. Is there another one to which you're referring, or what?
(no subject)
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Date: 10/9/11 17:11 (UTC)So after looking through possibly up to tens of thousands in a state of millions they found... one voter who used a dead guys vote.... and 19 others who voted illegally as well.
They didn't verify that every confirmed voter voted.
So you've debunked Jeff.... how?
(no subject)
Date: 10/9/11 19:07 (UTC)But let's pretend it was just these two, for the sake of having a number to work with. Of this population, .0013% (a little over a thousandth of one percent) were have discovered to have committed voter fraud. Of those people, 95% committed voter fraud an ID law will do absolutely nothing to prevent. 5% of that group--or about .07 thousandths of a percent of the total population--would have been foiled by this law.
So that's how, basically. "They didn't verify that every confirmed voter voted" is something you're going to have to back up, by the way. Calling them at their homes is not the only way to go about it, no matter what Jeff tells you.
Edit: Got the percentages a bit wrong; they were too high before. Now corrected above.
(no subject)
Date: 10/9/11 21:10 (UTC)Did they call up and verify that all signed voters that day actually voted? Or did they not canvas the rolls carefully to look specifically for fraud that would have been prevented by a Voter ID?
(no subject)
Date: 10/9/11 21:30 (UTC)Eh. From my point of view the only groups here are (a) people who committed voting fraud and (b) people who didn't. Whatever activity the people in group B did that day instead of committing voter fraud isn't important.
But sure, let's see how pervasive a problem this is when you stick to those who actually voted. The total population of Wisconsin is 5,654,774. 2,939,604 of those people voted in the 2008 presidential election, or a little under 52%. Assuming voters turned out at that rate in even distributions (I realize an assumption is exactly what that is), that makes about 780,000 voters in those two counties. That makes a bit over .0001% of the voting population who committed the type of fraud this law would prevent. And keep in mind that it was really one person in twelve counties, not two, so .0001% is inaccurately large.
Did they call up and verify that all signed voters that day actually voted? Or did they not canvas the rolls carefully to look specifically for fraud that would have been prevented by a Voter ID?
They didn't call, and they did uncover identity-related voter fraud. That's what I know. What do you know that made you say "they didn't verify that every confirmed voter voted?"
(no subject)
Date: 10/9/11 21:53 (UTC)No, actually that's wrong. Looking at the rolls and looking at who is alive or dead would prevent that fraud. Looking at who is in jail and who voted would prevent that fraud. Requiring all person's be who they claimed... well nobody has tested to see how severe that problem is.
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Date: 11/9/11 07:39 (UTC)How does this law not cover that issue? If you have to show a photo ID when voting, you won't be voting twice.
(no subject)
Date: 11/9/11 15:23 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 10/9/11 16:53 (UTC)Absolutely! Florida pre-2000: About 94,000 people were removed without notification. They made the mistake of being listed as "black."
Yes, roll purges and false voter IDs are both voter fraud. I hope we can agree on that.
The difference, again, is one of degree. Your method compares with throwing shell casings. One could put out an eye!
The other compares with sweeping a crowd with a sub-machine gun.
(no subject)
Date: 10/9/11 17:06 (UTC)Untrue on both counts (http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/news/election2000/election2000_felons2.html). The felon list was not pulled together via race, and there was public notification allowing for appeals.
Yes, roll purges and false voter IDs are both voter fraud. I hope we can agree on that.
Not at all. Roll purges are absolutely necessary, as this sort of voter ID fraud clearly indicates.
(no subject)
Date: 10/9/11 17:13 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 10/9/11 18:31 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 10/9/11 17:53 (UTC)We seem to disagree not that voter fraud happens, but who it benefits. As long as the voters purged vote to the left of the spectrum, it seems, you have no problem. With that observation, I'm done with this useless thread.
Later, until the next useless thread arises.
(no subject)
Date: 10/9/11 18:30 (UTC)Actually, the article outright rebuts it:
"But a review of state records, internal e-mails of DBT employees and testimony before the civil rights commission and an elections task force showed no evidence that minorities were specifically targeted.
...
Records show that DBT told the state it would not use race as a criterion to identify felons. The list itself bears that out: More than 1,000 voters were matched with felons though they were of different races."
AND
"The list identified thousands of legal voters as criminals, forcing them to prove their innocence before they could cast a ballot."
So no. The article clearly, concisely, exactly says the opposite of your claim.
What the linked article didn't mention, but what is mentioned in the movie Unprecedented, are the connections between the State government (under Jeb Bush at the time) and ChoicePoint and the specifics on how the purge rolls were generated.
You run with a conspiracy theory film, I go with the Palm Beach Post. Okay then.
As long as the voters purged vote to the left of the spectrum, it seems, you have no problem. With that observation, I'm done with this useless thread.
Odd assertion to make.
(no subject)
Date: 11/9/11 03:32 (UTC)Unprecedented has them.
(no subject)
Date: 11/9/11 03:50 (UTC)