OHIO’S HUGE VOTER FRAUD INVESTIGATION TURNS UP NEARLY NOTHING

What if Voter Fraud Existed?

By Bill Maher

OHIO’S HUGE VOTER FRAUD INVESTIGATION TURNS UP NEARLY NOTHING

Forty-four non-citizens may have voted illegally in Ohio at some point since 2000... Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted has been on a mission to weed out purported voter fraud in the state since he took office in 2011. After launching an investigation into what he called an “expanding loophole” allowing non-citizens to vote in Ohio and potentially decide elections, he announced Thursday that 145 non-citizens were registered to vote illegally in 2014, amounting to just .0002 percent of the 7.7 million registered voters in the state. 

Husted’s office would not provide any information about the 27 people it referred to the Attorney General’s office for further review. But in 2013, his office sent 17 potential cases — .0003 percent of total ballots cast in the state — to the AG who eventually referred them to county prosecutors. Most reports of voting irregularities were dropped by the county prosecutors because the “voter fraud” problems were determined to have been caused by simple mistakes and confused senior citizens, according to a Cleveland Plain Dealer investigation.

But let’s give the voter fraud obsessives the benefit of the doubt. Let’s say they really do care about stamping out this imaginary crime because they love democracy, and rules are rules, and not because it’s a blatant (and fairly racist) way to put their thumb on the scale, and reduce voter turnout. Let’s say our first rule for elections is: Even one illegitimate voter in the wrong place is unacceptable. We need 100% purity when we count people, or the system collapses, and if that means a few dumb oldies get disenfranchised, tough titty.

If that’s the case, then why does the Roberts Court apply the exact opposite standard to money in our elections? Isn’t that the whole point of their ruling on Citizens United? When it comes to money, anything goes? And if some dirty money gets into the system, well, politics isn’t a pinochle party, and everything evens out?

Shouldn’t the same standards apply to voters and donations?