Jeff Jacoby: How to steal an election: "A recent story that didn't get nearly the attention it deserved was the New York Daily News report that 46,000 registered New York City voters are also registered to vote in Florida. Nearly 1,700 of them have had absentee ballots mailed to their home in the other state, and as many as 1,000 have voted twice in the same election. Can 1,000 fraudulent votes change an election? Well, George W. Bush won Florida in 2000 by just 537 votes.
It is illegal to register to vote simultaneously in different jurisdictions, but scofflaws have little to worry about. As the Daily News noted, 'efforts to prevent people from registering and voting in more than one state rely mostly on the honor system.' Those who break the law rarely face prosecution or serious punishment. It's easy -- and painless -- to cheat.
I learned this firsthand in 1996, when I registered my wife's cat as a voter in Cook County, Ill., Norfolk County, Mass., and Cuyahoga County, Ohio, and then requested absentee ballots from all three venues. My purpose wasn't to cast illegal multiple votes -- I think I've still got those absentee ballots saved in a file somewhere -- but to demonstrate how vulnerable to manipulation America's election system had become." Jeff Jacoby - Townhall.com
How reassuring. Can we trust that any election is won fairly? I think it's ridiculous that people say that Bush stole the 2000 election. What's probably true based on this article is that he narrowly escaped having the election stolen from him.
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Sure, vote stealing happens. It has been a horrible part of American politics since the beginning, and unfortunately real election reform has been blocked time and time again by the politicians because they are each convinced that the system can work for them. From redrawing voting precints, to multiple voters, to dead voters, to the most recent version - electronic vote machine vote smudging. Here's a story detailing one famous version: http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0310/S00211.htm
I find it horribly partisan of you to just announce that democrats do this and not republicans. Of course republicans do this. The entire political system is set up to do it. And until we get real election reform, both sides will try to out-cheat the other. In the short run, we can only hope that one side emerges with such a clear majority that it outweighs the number of illegal votes placed. At least that way we won't have the harmful feelings of election stealing lasting for four years.
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