From the no shit files:
Secretary of State William Gardner, other officials from his office and a top election law attorney from the attorney general’s office made a more than two-hour presentation to the state Ballot Law Commission, which is charged with resolving disputes related to election laws. The review consumed 817 work hours by members of the attorney general’s office with help from the Department of Safety.
The key results were:
— Out of more than 94,000 names of people with the same first and last names and dates of birth who voted in New Hampshire and at least one of the other 27 states in the Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck program, all but 142 were accounted for as being different voters in each state
— In New Hampshire, out of 86,952 people who registered to vote on state primary or general election day in 2016, a total 6,033 did not present photo IDs and as a result signed affidavits swearing that a New Hampshire community was their domicile.
— The secretary of state’s office verified that all but 458 cases were legitimate New Hampshire voters, and referred those 458 cases to the attorney general’s office. The attorney general’s office was able to verify that 392 of those voters were in fact domiciled in New Hampshire and registered and voted properly.
— The attorney general’s office was unable to verify the domiciles of the remaining 66 after exhausting all investigative resources, but a top attorney in the office said it does not mean an unlawful vote was cast in any of those 66 cases.
The notion of widespread voter fraud is such a load of bullshit that even Trump and company couldn’t keep the con running.
rikyrah
No lie told.
rikyrah
The just as big story from 2016, is the story of those denied the franchise.
I will continue to point out that, in those ‘key states’, the number of those denied the franchise, was 2-3 times greater than the ‘margin of victory’ by Dolt45.
rikyrah
On multiple fronts, from deregulation to tax cuts that largely benefit top earners, Trump is enabling a predatory economy, argues @helaineolen: https://t.co/WMUThmY3hi
— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) May 29, 2018
kingweasil
that asshole Korbach from Kansas is another one
rikyrah
It was never an issue. It was ALWAYS A LIE!!!
trollhattan
Voter suppression turned Wisconsin in 2016, period. The Kochs got their payday from their Walker investment.
rikyrah
Do you know that they’re trying to institute an actual Poll Tax in NH for students?
James Powell
I would have said “a bullshit excuse” but yeah, it is and always has been an excuse. And it isn’t just the lack of any evidence of fraudulent voting. It’s the fact that those who make the argument always include a reference – sometimes with a nudge nudge wink wink – to which people are supposedly doing the fraudulent voting.
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah: The Republican president is enacting the Republican agenda. Does this really surprise anyone?
Turgidson
The problem the GOP dolts are running into now is that there are enough wingnut dipshits who actually believe voter fraud is pervasive that they decided to go Sherlock Holmes on the issue and find the proof. The old school GOP power brokers knew it was just a scam to keep the coloreds from voting and generate some extra “economic anxiety” among their idiot base. But some of those idiots didn’t get the memo, thanks in no small part to Hair Furor. But these true believers have been actually running for and winning office in large numbers since the Teabagger craze started. They really believe the cons and say the quiet parts loud, just like their *president.
SFAW
@rikyrah:
It’s a slippery slope: first, those people will want to be allowed to cast a vote. Next thing you know, they’ll want to be considered more than three-fifths of a person. Where will it all end, I ask you?
Omnes Omnibus
@trollhattan: I have been saying that since November of 2016.
TEL
One part of the article that made me laugh:
Commission Chairman Cook wanted to know if her office received complaints of “busloads of people being brought across the border to vote.”
She answered that in fact there were buses from out-of-state in the 2014 midterm election, but the people they carried were legitimate New Hampshire voters.
“I don’t believe we had any complaints of busloads of voters in 2016, mostly because we had serious conversations with the major political parties in 2015 to stop renting buses from other states,” Edwards said.
“That is what the problem was. At college campuses, the political parties will rent buses to move the college students around to the polling places so that they can vote. And the buses are usually from out-of-state,” Edwards said. “So, we received calls on Vermont buses, Massachusetts buses and Maine buses.”
“Each time we have sent an investigator out to the polling place, they have been able to determine that the bus company is from Maine or Vermont or Massachusetts, but not the voters on the bus.”
LAO
@TEL: You know, I always thought the claims of “out-of-state bus loads of voters” was a fever dream of the right. It’s odd to learn that there was some basis for the claim (even though that basis was ridiculous).
Kay
I think we’ve made great strides in recognizing that voter fraud was bullshit, which took a decade, sadly.
BUT a lot of the state law that came in based on this bullshit is still in place, as are the SCOTUS decisions that were grounded in vague nonsense and ignorance.
So we could do a lot better with on the ground work protecting invidual voter’s rights- since they don’t have the legal and process protections we used to have.
El Caganer
So this fall the hits will include: voter fraud (nonexistent), voter suppression (caging, ID requirements, removing polling places or reducing hours), vote rigging (likely in any R-state that uses electronic voting; that is, all of them), and – if it still looks like the R’s are going to get hosed – voter intimidation (pasty fat-asses open carrying and wandering around polling places, loud-mouthed nobodies demanding to see people’s papers, etc.). Let the good times roll.
Peale
@TEL: So why does New Hampshire have so few bus companies that charge reasonable rental rates? There’s the scandal. LOL
Joyce H
Man, anyone who believes that the same name voting in multiple jurisdictions is proof of voter fraud just needs to search their own name on Facebook. You are not unique, Sam Wilson.
TenguPhule
@Kay:
John Roberts deserves to die as a traitor for his destruction of the Voting Rights Act’s powers.
Jonny Scrum-half
I have an older relative who lives in NY State but who many years ago used to live in Pennsylvania and who still owns a house in Pennsylvania. She’s a very big Trump supporter, and she voted in Pennsylvania, where she hasn’t lived in about 30 years. (To be fair, I think that she always votes in Pennsylvania, not just for this past election.) She’s the only example of actual voter fraud that I’m personally aware of.
Spanky
Ooooooh, the burn!
Mnemosyne
@Joyce H:
IIRC, one of the journalistic investigations of “voter fraud” discovered that there really are a few hundred poor bastards in this country whose parents named them Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck. And that’s leaving aside the common names that later became famous, like Michael Bolton, Stan Lee, etc.
sherparick
Oh yes they can. Like Peak Wingnut there is no limit in the fact base world if the lie serves the Cause, the same Cause for which South Carolina seceded in 1860, followed by 7 other States, fired on Ft. Sumter in 1861 took 4 more states out with them, and then fought a 4 year long war for that Cause and then nursed it in their bosoms for another 150 years. How the Right is will twist the tiniest kernels to fit their conspiracy theories is demonstrated in the story that sent Roseanne off the cliff. Valerie Jarrett’s father and mother were doctors and after he served in the Korean War he got a job to work at Hospital in rural Iran. So that is where Valerie Jarrett was born. The family moved back to Chicago when she was 7 (after a 1 year stay in London). That birth and early childhood stay in Iran of the 1950s is the kernel for the “Iran and Muslim Brotherhood Agent” myth (our Righties can never wrap their brains around the fact that Iran is “Shia” Islam, while the Muslim Brotherhood is Sunni and based in Egypt). That a John Smith voted in New Hampshire and another John Smith voted in Massachusetts is enough for them to scream “voter fraud” until the cows come home.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: There is a Joe Stalin in Wisconsin.
MuckJagger
Doesn’t matter. The nitwits will still believe it.
Hungry Joe
If I wanted to vote fraudulently, how would I even go about it? I walk into a polling place and declare that I’m … who? I’d have to look up the name and address of someone in that precinct, pretend that I’m him, and hope that 1) he hasn’t voted already that day, and 2) none of the volunteers in the polling place are his friends or neighbors — which at least one of them probably is. If I get caught, I get arrested, and it’s national news. All that risk … for one vote. Unless I want to try my luck again, in another precinct. So, I look up the name and address of someone in that precinct, then …
Yeah. Every election this happens millions and millions of times. And nobody ever, ever gets caught. Because it’s so easy.
Stan
Have you ever been to new Hampshire? It’s a suburb of Boston, plus some lakes.
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
A company I used to work for had a customer named Richard Head. He preferred to be called Dick.
Parents are assholes sometimes.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
I’ve read stuff that voter suppression hits poor whites who vote Red has hard as minorities, so makes me wonder if Voter Suppression is more about maintaining a narrative in these idiots head about who is Real Amurica’ like Gold Buggery than about winning elections.
YetAnotherJay formerly (Jay S)
@Jonny Scrum-half: If your mommie is a commie, you gotta turn her in.//
schrodingers_cat
@Omnes Omnibus: One of India’s southern states had a minister whose first name was Stalin.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._K._Stalin
p.a.
But for the 27% lack of proof = proof: conspiracy.
Simon Taverner
Down with the Franciscans!
SFAW
@Omnes Omnibus:
Did he move there from Georgia?
catclub
@Jonny Scrum-half: so turn her in.
Except it is very clear that they are keeping the con running.
SFAW
@Hungry Joe:
That’s because all “those” people have Obama ‘phones, which they purchased with Soros bucks, so they can call the FBI’s Central Voting Fraud Help Desk to get updated lists of dead “voters” whom they can then impersonate, then they all get back in their Hitlary-paid-for buses and traipse to another voting precinct, and do it again. The non-Luegenpresse sources have estimated that a typical bus can cover 1000 polling places in a day.
So it seems pretty damn plausible to me.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
Just once, I want to see somebody ask one of these voter fraud horseshit salesmen why they don’t go out and get the proof of all this voter fraud. They could do it in a week. Go to any county in the U.S.—you get to choose—sit down in the courthouse and look at the death records over the last year and compare it to the voting records. If there’s a problem, there’ll be hundreds of cases of dead people having voted. It would be as easy as pie. No need to bother state officials. Anybody can go and look at those records; they’re public records. So why don’t they go to Philadelphia or Cuyahoga County, Ohio, which are the two counties I see named most often as wretched hives of scum and villainy—to say nothing of voter fraud—and find all this proof?
Somebody needs to ask this to their fucking faces why they don’t think enough of the welfare of their own democracy to take a few days to unearth this scourge.
catclub
@Joyce H:
a friend showed me a web site of ‘how many of my name are there” i think there are 13 of me.
howmanyofme.com as a wild guess.
SFAW
@catclub:
Seconded.
Trumpista morons will never learn, nor feel any sense of shame, so might as well make them pay a price for un-American behavior.
HeleninEire
The vote here last week was so good and so fair. I had until May 8th to register for the May 25th vote. (My first vote as an Irish citizen WOOT!!). The polls were open from 7am to 10pm.
There was an exit poll result at midnight, but they only started counting the votes at 6am on Saturday. ALL votes were paper ballots and all were counted out loud in front of everyone.
Check Yes (Ta) or No (Nil). Yep, was in both languages. Make sure it’s an X and you’re grand.
Did I tell you I LOVE IT HERE? Yeah. I do.
Jonny Scrum-half
@SFAW: Well, she does have redeeming qualities. She’s actually a very thoughtful, intelligent person.
Bess
@Mnemosyne:
I had a roommate named Richard Slider. Nice guy but he was a Dick.
Brachiator
@p.a.:
Yep. Not just for the 27%, but also for their enablers.
The Heritage Foundation, eager to aid right wing nutjobs, declares that voter fraud is a huge problem, even if you can’t find it.
As others have noted, this is just a scam to cover voter suppression efforts. And this just means that we have to fight harder, because we are not going to get assistance from the Trump administration.
Omnes Omnibus
@SFAW: Haha! No. He was born here. He called WI’s election agency during the Walker recall. He knew we were checking for fake names and knew his would raise a red flag (as it were), so he just wanted let us know that he was real and he wanted Walker out.
trollhattan
@Bess:
Spouse’s stepfather #1 was Harry Lantz.
Steve in the ATL
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
Hell, start with Cook County, Illinois! Then any parish in Louisiana.
Dave
@catclub: Mine gets an estimate of one. It’s the last name that does it.
Hungry Joe
Paper votes only, counted by hand, precinct by precinct, in front of witnesses, with the ballots later secured in case there’s a (rare) call for a recount. It’ll take longer to get results, but so what? What if it takes a whole 24 hours longer? Or even 48 hours? The voting for the President of the United States takes place in early November; the President assumes office on Jan. 20. The transition team can afford to lose one day, or even two, if in return, we get fair elections.
Is this way too simple? Is that that problem?
Bobby Thomson
Couldn’t keep the con running? Their allies in the press will allow them to keep it going forever. Deficit reduction and butter emails never went away and never will. What makes you think this zombie lie is any different?
SFAW
@Jonny Scrum-half:
So I guess it was a fake/sockpuppet you that wrote:
because the two statements are functionally incompatible.
ETA: Of course, this does not delve into the possibility that your assessment of her, vis-a-vis personality, is faulty.
catclub
@Bobby Thomson:
I am trying to figure out what the typo is, here, and am stumped.
SFAW
@catclub:
But Her Emails!
JDM
The website How Many of Me reports over 14,000 people in the USA with my first and last name. It’s highly likely that some of those people also share my birth date.
Bobby Thomson
@SFAW: they go well with scones.
Bobby Thomson
@Hungry Joe: it’s sometimes easier to cheat with hand counting
Amir Khalid
@Mnemosyne:
There was a prominent Malaysian, an activist for blind people, named Ivan Ho.
Omnes Omnibus
@JDM: Only 229 with mine.
SFAW
@Omnes Omnibus:
356 for me. I win.
Of course, my brother kicks my butt with 512.
Now I have to find all the precincts where I can do the voter fraud thing in 2020. President Harold Stassen, baby! (Sorry, Baud.)
catclub
@SFAW: of course. thanks.
If I had read it aloud I might have gotten that.
SFAW
@catclub:
I cheated — I had the voices in my head read it to me.
Ruckus
@JDM:
I’ve known three other men with my first/last/middle initial and at the VA I know one with same last/last 4 of SSN.
Ruckus
@SFAW:
How many voices?
Gex
@Jonny Scrum-half: Do tell what are the redeeming qualities of a Trump voter who has put a target on my back and on the backs of others? She goes out of her way to give herself more political power than is warranted by voting in a state she doesn’t live in and directly help lead to a lot of the increased violence that marginalize people are facing and you think she’s just swell?
SFAW
@Ruckus:
It varies.
Why? Do you need to borrow some? More than happy to lend you some.
SFAW
@Gex:
Snowflake.
YetAnotherJay formerly (Jay S)
@catclub: @Bobby Thomson:
Something for Betty to carve for election days!
SFAW
@YetAnotherJay formerly (Jay S):
The question is: is she better at carving butter, or carving up RWNJs?
I know, I know: por que no los dos?
Gelfling 545
@Simon Taverner: ?
Gelfling 545
@Mnemosyne: I actually had a student named Michael Hunt. Also Brandy Alexander ( child of strict Baptist teetotaler parents) . Went to high school with a girl whose surname was Hoar. It won’t matter much what first name you give a female who’s stuck with that.
Sab
@Omnes Omnibus: 623 have my maiden name. Only 67 have my married name, but they mostly live in my state.
Gelfling 545
@catclub: Apparently I am unique – or nonexistent. There is “ one or fewer”.
Planetpundit
Voter suppression is a feature, not a bug, of Banana Republicanism.
Omnes Omnibus
@Gelfling 545: That would explain a lot.
The Fat Kate Middleton
@Gelfling 545: One of my classmates was named Herletta Farta.
CapnMubbers
@Mnemosyne: I know someone whose initials are FCK. His mother wouldn’t let his dad add “Ulysses” as the first middle name.
Jake the antisoshul soshulist
@Turgidson:
In 2012, while I was standing in line to vote, a guy came in and asked the pollworker if any ineligible voters had tried to vote. She looked at him like he was nuts and told him they didn’t have any of that. I don’t think he wanted to believe her, but must have decided not to call her a liar.
J R in WV
@Spanky:
I take Ambien, and have been known to eat a cookie and drink a glass of milk at 3 am or so. Even to post on B-J while under the influence of Zolpiden Tartarate (generic Ambien).
So far — while I can be intemperate with other posters (sorry Corner Stone, guys) I have never broken out as a racist. Perhaps because I’m not, you know, a racist…
J R in WV
@Gelfling 545:
Famous founder settler family in WV history named Hogg. One of the bastids names his daughters Ima and Ura Hogg. Can’t even…….
suezboo
Pedant Editor : DisENfranchise. Leaving now.