Vote Thieves

Every ten years political representation in the U.S.House of Representatives is redistributed (reapportioned) among the fifty states.The process began anew with the 2010 census, which is counting the nation's population as the basis for reapportionment.The decennial census has a history wrought with failures and inaccurate counts. In Vote Thieves, geographer Orlando J. Rodriguez shows how our current method of apportionment creates an incentive for illegal immigration and polarizes our political system. Historically it caused the end of the Federalist Party, bolstered slavery, disenfranchised African Americans after Reconstruction, fostered segregation in the South, denied voting rights to women, and disenfranchised voters in the presidential election of 2000. Since 1989, six congressional bills have attempted to change the population basis for apportionment; none passed. Currently under review in Congress, House Joint Resolution 53 would amend the Constitution to include only citizens in the apportionment base.The 2008 presidential platform of the Republican Party included a similar call to change the apportionment basis. This issue affects all U.S. residents—legal and illegal alike.Recent history has triggered a growing suspicion among Americans that their political system is flawed. Vote Thieves explains a singular flaw that voters suspect but cannot put in plain words, and gives them the information they need to petition for a more responsive political system.

Waiting for the Cemetery Vote begins with an overview chapter of Arkansas election fraud since the nineteenth century and then moves on to more specific examples of fraudulent activities over a dozen or so years that coincide with the onset of the modern progressive era in Arkansas. Author Tom Glaze, who was a trial lawyer battling election fraud during this time, is the ideal chronicler for this topic, bringing a memoirist's intimate insight together with a wealth of historical knowledge. Glaze describes the manipulation of absentee ballots and poll-tax receipts; votes cast by the dead, children, and animals; forgeries of ballots from nursing homes; and threats to body or livelihood made to anyone who would dare question these activities or monitor elections. Deceptive practices used to control election results were disturbingly brazen in the gubernatorial elections in the 1960s and were especially egregious in Conway and Searcy Counties in the 1970s and in special elections for the state senate in Faulkner, Conway, and Van Buren Counties. A clean-election movement began in the early 1970s, led not by party or political leaders but by individual citizens. These vigilant and courageous Arkansans undertook to do what their public institutions persistently failed to: insure that elections for public office were honest and that the will of the people was scrupulously obliged. Prominent and colorful among these groups was a small band of women in Conway County who dubbed themselves the "Snoop Sisters" and took on the long-established corrupt machine of Sheriff Marlin Hawkins. Written with longtime Arkansas political writer Ernie Dumas and illustrated with cartoons from the inimitable George Fisher, Waiting for the Cemetery Vote will be an entertaining and informative read for any Arkansas history and politics buffs.

Behind the deeply contentious 2020 election stands a real story of a broken election process. Election fraud that alters election outcomes and dilutes legitimate votes occurs all too often, as is the bungling of election bureaucrats. Our election process is full of vulnerabilities that can be — and are — taken advantage of, raising questions about, and damaging public confidence in, the legitimacy of the outcome of elections. This book explores the reality of the fraud and bureaucratic errors and mistakes that should concern all Americans and offers recommendations and solutions to fix those problems.

The 2012 election will be one of the hardest-fought in U.S. history. It is also likely to be one of the closest, a fact that brings concerns about voter fraud and bureaucratic incompetence in the conduct of elections front and center. If we don't take notice, we could see another debacle like the Bush-Gore Florida recount of 2000 in which courts and lawyers intervened in what should have involved only voters. Who's Counting? will focus attention on many problems of our election system, ranging from voter fraud to a slipshod system of vote counting that noted political scientist Walter Dean Burnham calls “the most careless of the developed world.” In an effort to clean up our election laws, reduce fraud and increase public confidence in the integrity of the voting system, many states ranging from Georgia to Wisconsin have passed laws requiring a photo ID be shown at the polls and curbing the rampant use of absentee ballots, a tool of choice by fraudsters. The response from Obama allies has been to belittle the need for such laws and attack them as akin to the second coming of a racist tide in American life. In the summer of 2011, both Bill Clinton and DNC chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz preposterously claimed that such laws suppressed minority voters and represented a return to the era of Jim Crow. But voter fraud is a well-documented reality in American elections. Just this year, a sheriff and county clerk in West Virginia pleaded guilty to stuffing ballot boxes with fraudulent absentee ballots that changed the outcome of an election. In 2005, a state senate election in Tennessee was overturned because of voter fraud. The margin of victory? 13 votes. In 2008, the Minnesota senate race that provided the 60th vote needed to pass Obamacare was decided by a little over 300 votes. Almost 200 felons have already been convicted of voting illegally in that election and dozens of other prosecutions are still pending. Public confidence in the integrity of elections is at an all-time low. In the Cooperative Congressional Election Study of 2008, 62% of American voters thought that voter fraud was very common or somewhat common. Fear that elections are being stolen erodes the legitimacy of our government. That's why the vast majority of Americans support laws like Kansas's Secure and Fair Elections Act. A 2010 Rasmussen poll showed that 82% of Americans support photo ID laws. While Americans frequently demand observers and best practices in the elections of other countries, we are often blind to the need to scrutinize our own elections. We may pay the consequences in 2012 if a close election leads us into pitched partisan battles and court fights that will dwarf the Bush-Gore recount wars.

During the 2016 Presidential election, there were repeated allegations made about voter fraud, by the winning candidate. Semi-annual studies by the Brennan Center for Justice of NYU conclusively demonstrate however, that most allegations of fraud turn out to be baseless. Issues relating to false numbers are more often the result of mistakes made by voters and election officials than intentional foul play. Nevertheless, voter fraud can occur. This edition examines issues related to election processes and the problem of fraud. It includes primary and secondary sources from a variety of perspectives; eyewitnesses, scientific journals, government officials, and many others.