Saturday, October 11, 2008

Rokita Finally Calls For Investigation

He's been very slow to the game, but Secretary of State Todd Rokita has finally called for an investigation into vote fraud activity in Lake County. He's asking Attorney General Steve Carter, who has also been noticeably missing in action, and federal prosecutors to investigate according to an AP report. The problem is not simply confined to fraudulent registrations submitted by ACORN but also includes allegations of absentee voting fraud as well. "In his letter to Carter, the Republican secretary of state said he received detailed complaints from Lake County residents of 'hundreds, perhaps thousands" of violations of registration laws, including fraudulent applications, wrong names on registrations or absentee ballots and fictitious registrations or ballots,'" the AP reports. Democratic Attorney General candidate Linda Pence is usually calling for aggressive action by our Attorney General's office and criticizing it for not doing enough. Why isn't she speaking out on this matter?

5 comments:

Acros said...

Indianapolis has 677,401 registered to vote and only 644,197 register voters. Someone needs to investigate this also!!! Indiana is to close to just ignore.

Paul K. Ogden said...

Acro,

I think you mean 644,197 eligible to vote (18 or over). A lot of people are trying to blow that off as no big deal because many of those people who are registered are "inactive voters." But there is no separate list for "active" and "inactive" voters. There is one list. When you have a voter registration list filled with people who are deceased or who have moved you open the door to fraudulent votes, either by people voting absentee for those "inactive" voters which does not involve a check of the voter's ID or having people vote at those places where the ID requirement is not being enforcd. It's a sitaution ripe for fraud.

Clerk Beth White did not do a purge as the Secretary of State Todd Rokita wanted her to do. I don't completely blame her...the feds got involved starting in 1993 and made it very, very time consuming and expensive for Clerks to actually delete people from th rolls. If someone hasn't votedin 4 years, I see nothing wrong with a purge of their names and requiring them to spend 5 minutes to re-register. Any registered voter who has not voted in 4 years is almost always dead or has moved anyway.

It should be noted that even if you look at "active voters" - those who have voted since 2004 or registered since then, you're still talking a 92% registration rate. Does anyone seriously believe Indy has a 92% registration rate, once the "inactive" registered voters are removed? The 92% speaks to volumes of duplicates on the voter registration rolls and the possibility of fraud.

artfuggins said...

Inactive voters are kept on a separate list at the in the book at the end of the list of the active voters.

truthblogger said...

You mean voter registration fraud, not "voter fraud".

Chris Worden said...

I agree with AI that it's ironic that Dems are saying there is nothing to worry about if some registrations are bogus because of the voter ID law they passed. But here's my question. Aren't they right?

If you vote early, like I did in Marion County, there an R & D who looked at my information, so a Republican had to verify my identity. Does anybody seriously thinkg nobody will call out Mr. Jimmy Johns?

Another main example of alleged "voter fraud" is the woman who was registered to vote ELEVEN TIMES!!! What they don't tell you was that all eleven were at the same address. Someone tell me how this woman will be able to vote more than once? I promise you that if there are more registrations than voters it's only because they've made it so easy to register and a lot of people don't know they don't get purged, so they'll repeat register.

Oh, and I'm told that dead people are registered, too. Say Wilbur Snaffle, age 73, died last year and Acorn submitted his name to vote. Who is making the fake ID that passes muster and paying a guy who looks like he's 73 who nobody else knows in the community to go vote?

That would take some massive coordination, and if Lake County could do such a thing, wouldn't they have done it for Obama in the primary?

My thought is this: save the taxpayers' money and the Attorney General's time and do one simple thing -- send the southern Lake County Republicans with the strongest personalities to work precincts in Gary, East Chicago, and Hammond if they think something shady will happen. Give them cell phones with photo/video and audio taping capability. Have them photograph voters who they suspect of vote fraud. If the voter is legit, (s)he'll smile for the camera (and probably give you a nice hand gesture for questioning his/her legitimacy as a voter).