Why Republicans Focus on Voter Fraud in the US
Republicans tend to believe that individual voter fraud is a problem and favor restrictive voter laws, such as voter ID laws.
Republicans will tell you that individual voter fraud runs rampant in the US with millions fraudulent voters trying to cast their ballot for Democrats. The truth is the voter fraud statistics say it is essentially nonexistent at an individual level. Furthermore groups like ACORN have had almost no reported incidents of voter fraud, while they have help millions of voters cast their ballot.
If individual voter fraud isn’t an issue then why does the GOP insist that it is. The answer is twofold:
1. People who have issues getting their vote cast do to mobility, identification, work schedules and economic standing are disproportionately voters who will vote for the Democratic party.
2. A basic manipulation tactic is to accuse your opponent of the exact thing that you are doing, so when you get accused of that thing yourself it doesn’t seem that drastic.
Republican Voter Fraud History
Republicans know that when everyone votes they lose. In fact the less people who vote the higher chances they have of winning. The Republican party may not have the numbers, but they most certainly have the money. A large majority of money from Big Business is funneled to Republican candidates in order to ensure victory, which obviously gives them sway with our government. Given the hundreds of millions of dollars spent each year on the Republican party it is in the interest of many of Americas most powerful to ensure that the vote goes to the Republicans. Yet as mentioned before this can only be accomplished through a few means and one of the most important is the vote.
The Republican Election Strategy
The Republican election strategy is involves smearing the competition, accusing them of voter fraud and then using groups the disenfranchise voters.
How Republicans Disenfranchise Voters
Big Business funnels hundreds of millions of dollars to groups who’s main purpose it is to seek out voter fraud in swing states. These groups scour the records to find “illegal” voters. These include dead voters, voters trying to vote twice and voters with fraudulent addresses. They claim 24 million illegal voters in the US, although the actual number is closer to zero.
The Republican Statistics on Voter Fraud
- 1.8 million dead people are listed as voters!
- 2.8 million people have more than one registration!
- 12 million records have bogus – or fraudulent – addresses!
- The Truth…. You are more likely to get struck by lightening than commit voter fraud. This includes people who commit voter fraud unknowingly.
So the facts say voter fraud doesn’t exist on an individual level, while Republicans say it happens in the tens of millions. Where do they get these numbers.
Where Republicans Get Their Facts
Republicans inflate numbers based on semantics. They use things like people with the same birthday and same name in the same state (the odds of two “John Smiths” born on “1/1/50″ in Florida is statistically common for instance), individuals who are on the poll list but are since deceased (these people don’t have to vote for the GOP to consider them frauds…. They can’t vote, they are dead), among other twisted facts.
Republicans Steal the Election
The chances of the headline, “Republicans Steal the Election”, is something that happened before and something that could very likely happen again. Less than 600 votes put Bush in office in 2004 and in 2001 it seemed Bush stole the election from Al Gore. In both cases his brother controlled the voting machines in Florida. This election Tagg Romney founded a Hedge fund called Solamere Capital and is a financial partner with HIG Capital who invests in Hart Intercivic, a polling machine company that operates machines at polling places in Hamilton County, Ohio. Republicans will tell you that left wing communists are blowing this story out of proportion. This is the same type of disinformation and Republican tactics that allowed Republicans to steal elections before. Don’t be fooled.
Republican Voter Fraud is a big issue in the United States and is seriously discrediting our democracy. If Republicans win the election they will continue to work for the interests of Big Business and our country will continue to privatize programs that benefit the 99% and our debt and deficit will continue to grow. Stand up to Republican voter fraud by casting your vote.