Before I go on I want to give props to the 59% of Oregonians and especially the 26% of West Virginians and 30% of Kentuckians that came out to help Barack Obama nail this nomination, not enough has been made of your support and I wanted to thank you for it.
Many of the troubles faced this primary season have been down to the ‘open’ primaries. Indeed, Hillary’s spurious claim to leading the popular vote is largely down to the fact that she has been the benefactor of crossover voting by loyal Republicans aiming to disrupt the Democratic Party’s nomination process. As a consequence many results have shown a far more favorable standing for Hillary than would otherwise have been. It's a sham and a distortion of the will of the party membership.
The action of crossover voting in order to disrupt another party's nomination process is illegal, it's called ’raiding’ a fifth degree felony known as election falsification.
RAIDING
From Wikipedia
"Raiding" consists of voters of one party crossing over and voting in the primary of another party, effectively allowing a party to help choose its opposition's candidate. The theory is that opposing party members vote for the weakest candidate of the opposite party in order to give their own party the advantage in the general election.
Since Super Tuesday and the effective conclusion of the Republican nomination process there have been numerous cases of ‘raiding’ in Democratic Party Primaries across the US and most prevalent in states that Barack Obama lost (the popular vote) by tight margins; Texas being one of the biggest and influential at that time, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Indiana being others of great significance. But there were still more.
It’s pointless trying to second guess what the results in some of these states may have looked like had a less vulnerable nominating process been in place, or had the corresponding Republican primaries been similarly competitive. It’s pointless to imagine whether the debacle over the Florida and Michigan delegates (somehow laid at Obama‘s feet) would even be an issue.
Taking nothing away from Hillary Clinton, who’s a great campaigner and was a deservingly popular politician, something pretty base has been going on.
There’s no reference to primary voting in the constitution, but the supreme court sensibly ruled that a party can bar non-party members from participating in their primary elections and operate a ‘closed‘ primary. The ruling was solely aimed at protecting a party’s members from disenfranchisement.
The state of Ohio tried to address raiding...
This offered by Mr Edward B. Foley, Director of Election Law @ Moritz
Section 3513.19 of the Ohio Revised Code states that it is the "duty" of poll workers in Ohio "to challenge the right of [a] person to vote" in a particular party’s primary if a poll worker "doubts" the person’s eligibility based on the ground (among others) that the person is "not affiliated with or is not a member of the political party whose ballot the person desires to vote." The same section further specifies that the poll worker is to determine the voter’s previous party affiliation by examining the voting records of the past two years. If those records show the voter to be a Republican, for example, then before giving the voter a Democratic ballot in the current primary, the statute then directs the poll worker to have the voter sign a "statement, made under penalty of election falsification, that the person desires to be affiliated with and supports the principles of the political party whose primary ballot the person desires to vote."
You can read the entire article Cross-over voting under Ohio law
But, this is all done at the discretion of the poll station volunteer, who could be party affiliated themselves, in fact it doesn‘t seem that people took the deterrent too seriously at all...
here’s the effect on an Ohio Clinton crossover voter...
"I just got back. My first observation was that the polls were dead empty. My particular location has 3 precincts at one spot so I found that to be very unusual, even for a primary election. Next, I couldn't find my Ohio drivers license so I got hassled about that. I had a copy of my latest property tax bill in my car and that was sufficient, barely. Lastly, they had me sign the affirmation about switching parties and supporting the principles of the Democrat party. I said that would be easy, because they don't have any. Everybody got a good chuckle as there isn't a Democrat within 5 miles any direction from where I vote. I then proceeded to cast my vote for Hillary Clinton. Dirty as it felt at the time, I have a feeling I'll be rewarded in the long run."
I’m sorry, but this is just outrageous! I mean I’m glad everyone ‘got a good chuckle’ from the false declaration. But, that bit about ‘had me sign the affirmation about switching parties’, well that’s so the authorities, you know those dudes that had ’a good chuckle’ have something to wave under your face in court when you’re charged with election falsification...unbelievable!
This was by no means a lone voice, there’s a whole bunch of overtly proud election falsifiers right here, maybe you’ve seen it all before, but I was stunned.
Is this country’s democracy really that broken, I mean seriously have we sunk that low!?
Don‘t these people get it? ‘Raiding’ is not something to be proud of or make smug jokes about, it’s unethical and an insult to the memories of the many truly heroic people throughout history who gave their lives in order to protect our right to a democracy. Surely, the least we, the beneficiaries of that sacrifice, could do is respect that democracy and respecting that democracy starts with respecting the views and opinions of those we don’t agree with. That’s like the whole point of having a democracy.
If we agreed with each other all the time, there’d be no need for it. It’s time for all of us, especially fuckwits like that lot in Ohio, to start acting like a grown up electorate, not to do so is amoral in my book.
There’s no argument as to whether raiding is illegal, so perhaps the best deterrent would be to prosecute those that do it.
For a moment I thought they were going to do just that in Ohio...
Steven Rosenfeld a senior fellow at Alternet.org wrote an article ‘Will Rush Limbaugh Be Indicted for Voter Fraud?’
As the board of election in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, where Cleveland is located, launches an investigation into illegal crossover voting in the state's 2008 presidential primary, a big open question remains unanswered: Will county officials go after the ringleaders of apparently illegal electioneering where thousands of Republican voters swore -- under penalty of law -- allegiance to the Democratic Party in order to vote for Hillary Clinton?
On Thursday, March 20, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported that the "Cuyahoga County Board of Election has launched an investigation that could lead to criminal charges against voters who maliciously switched parties for the March 4 presidential primary." According to the report, "One voter scribbled the following addendum to his pledge as a new Democrat: "For one day only."
"Such an admission amounts to voter fraud," the report continued, attributing that conclusion to BOE member Sandy McNair, a Democrat. The report said the four-member board -- two Democrats and two Republicans -- had yet to vote on whether it would issue subpoenas, although Ohio's secretary of state, Democrat Jennifer Brunner, is empowered to cast tie-breaking votes when the BOE is deadlocked.
For years, Republicans have literally made a federal case of voter fraud. The Bush Justice Department fired U.S. attorneys who would not prosecute cases of people who GOP politicos believed were impersonating voters to help Democratic candidates.
Voting rights groups such as ACORN, or the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, which registers millions of low-income people in presidential election years, have been prosecuted by U.S. attorneys for voter fraud -- even after ACORN followed the law and alerted the FBI about mistakes made by its volunteers.
But, then this happened...
Posted by Joe Guillen on Cleveland.com in it’s entirety here!
The Cuyahoga County Board of Elections decided on Monday not to pursue criminal charges against voters who switched parties in the March 4 primary.
The board had launched an investigation because some Republicans admitted to switching parties to benefit the GOP.
Democratic board member Sandy McNair, who initiated the investigation, asked the board at Monday's meeting to subpoena a Westlake Republican who wrote "Today Only" on his pledge card when he took a Democratic ballot. The three other board members, two Republicans and a Democrat, said they didn't want to force public testimony from the voter.
"We have so many other things we need to focus on," said Inajo Davis Chappell, the board's other Democrat. "I don't want to second-guess voters."
After the other board members said they opposed the subpoena, McNair said the board members should pursue topics they can agree upon.
Just in case you’re wondering Ms Chappell endorsed Obama, so fuck knows what her point was!
The fact that raiding has been so prevalent this primary season is largely due to the system being so open to abuse.
Individual states’ efforts to deter raiding are often ineffective as they directly conflict with a party’s craving for new registrations. This contradiction has resulted in a plethora of systems adopted from state to state: open, blanket, closed, semi-open, etc. a tad confusing to the electorate.
My girlfriend, a keen supporter of Barack Obama, made her first ever political donation to Obama’s primary campaign and is looking to get more involved in his general election campaign. But, due to the variety of systems in play she nearly missed her opportunity to vote for him:
She’s from Oregon, which as you know, just held its primary this past Tuesday or rather stopped receiving votes through last Tuesday, as it’s a mail in primary. She’d originally registered as an Independent in Oregon, but, thanks to you lot here at the Daily Kos I recently read that Oregon registrations were about to finish, so I reminded her to get a move-on. That’s when she discovered it was a ‘closed’ primary and that she wasn’t registered.
It was quickly resolved and she mailed in her barackoballot last week, but the system is confusing and I’m sure both candidates will have lost votes as a result of the process changing from state to state.
Surely, it would be far less confusing for both parties to use the same system across all the states, with both parties holding their state primary on the same day?
EFFECTS OF RAIDING
Apart from the single most egregious effect of influencing a party’s choice of nominee, there are going to be other longer term negative effects from all this and that’ll be the cost and confusion in canvassing all those false registrations during the general.
No doubt there were many genuine people previously registered as Republicans and Independents (like my girlfriend) that fully intend voting Democrat this fall, but they’re going to have to be picked out among tens of thousands of false registrations, making the process even more challenging than it already is.
Also, if these people were prepared to go to the extreme of breaking the law for their candidate then I’m quite sure they will be more than happy to stall canvassers, keep them engaged wasting their time and clogging up the process of contacting genuine Democrats, perhaps even plaguing election day strategies, using up volunteers’ valuable time wherever they can, taking the places of genuine Democrats on buses and in cars heading for polling stations only to vote Republican etc. Of course the Republicans will be just fine, they’ll use the old lists when canvassing.
I wonder just how much all those extra registrations will end up costing the Democratic party?
A SUGGESTION OR TWO
Now it’s all too late for this year and we are already suffering the consequences but as Hillary says it's time for a change, just not the kind of change she wants, something positive has to come out of this mess and perhaps that could be a new system.
It seems that it would be relatively easy to close the door on the practice of raiding, if the motivation was there. Of course a party is always going to opt for more registrations but perhaps there's a way to reward that drive at the same time as deterring ‘raiding’.
I would still opt for punishing those that had fraudulently voted this season and in particular I'd like to see those that have so brazenly and publicly encouraged the activity brought to justice.
I’d like to make a couple of suggestions.
- In the future voters that switch registration have to sit out the first primary after switching. They can switch all they like but will always have to sit out the next primary after switching, that should do it!
- In the UK each major political party is designated a proportional amount of time for 'party political broadcasts'. Instead of splitting MSM coverage straight down the middle why not reward the party with the most votes in the primary season. Why not use voter turnout to proportionally divvy up the media time available to each party? This would reward the political party with the biggest turn out of voters in their primary season. It would also have the effect of reflecting the desires of the electorate onto the MSM, ensuring that the most popular party would receive proportionately greater media coverage.
Surely, that would be an effective deterrent against a voter registering and voting for a party they didn’t believe in. Of course in the case of this year it would’ve meant virtually complete devastation for the republican campaign...how sad.
The proportional media split would ensure parties worked hard at involving the electorate across the country, the system would get more people involved in the democratic process, the parties would have to galvanize the electorate’s interest early on, and that can’t be a bad thing for democracy.
It would also mean the primary season would run to the end, every time, no more unimportant states, we'd still have the early caucuses and primaries as that can help build ‘winning momentum’ but the primaries would run through to the end. It may deliver some interesting fights, I mean if you know you’re in through Puerto Rico then maybe the laurels wouldn’t be pulled out too early.
I don't know, maybe it could work and maybe not but it feels that the craziness of this season has got to be for something. Our democracy is getting tardy, it’s rusty and it’s being abused, it's got to stop, we owe it to ourselves to keep moving forward with fresh ideas and to look for new ways to galvanize the electorate. Maybe one day the US democracy can again be the shining example it once was.
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