OUTRAGE: Is your name 'Joe Garcia' in Ohio or North Carolina? No vote for you!
Daily KOS
Thu Sep 15, 2016
Category: Politics
Democrats need to pay more attention to these shenanigans. Rolling Stone has just broken the biggest story that no one is talking about. The election this year isn't about Trump or Hillary-it's about Kris Kobach. Kobach is the biggest bigot in a position of power in this country: the well-known Secretary of State of Kansas.
He is one of Donald Trump's key advisors. He is the one behind the ridiculous proposal to "force" Mexico to pay for the wall. Before Trump, he was best known for drafting the now infamous "papers please" anti-brown law in Arizona. His chief hobby is apparently doing everything he can to keep dark-skinned voters off the rolls: and not just in Kansas.
Kris Kobach is the author of the Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck Program, a system that has been adopted by 28 states-most under GOP control. These include the important swing states of Ohio, Virginia, Georgia, and North Carolina. Kobach claims that the system can detect if someone is registered in more than one state: something that is actually an extremely rare occurrence. Crosscheck supposedly uses first name, last name, date of birth, and social security number. Kobach promised that Kansas would foot the bill to cover the costs of compiling the lists. The GOP Secretaries of State jumped at this.
Here's the problem:
According to the Crosscheck's own instruction manual:
"Social Security numbers are included for verification; the numbers might or might not match"
In the list of voters obtained by Rolling Stone, the social security numbers were apparently not even used.
Furthermore, one-fourth of the names on the list actually lacked a middle-name match, and ignored designations like Jr. or Sr.
In Georgia, hundreds of people with the name James Brown were tagged as suspects of voting twice-even though the system made no distinction between James Clifford Brown or James Arthur Brown.
Rolling Stone contacted every state for their Crosscheck list. It should be public record, but because voting twice is a felony, they were told that the lists were "suspects" part of a "criminal investigation."
In other words, a Trump racist can get your state's voter information, but a publication that wants to ensure innocent people don't have their fundamental, constitutional right to vote purged was told that exact same information is secret.
Rolling Stone got a few breaks. For example, Virginia sent them their list. (The state later sent a letter saying that was done in "error".) The results were shocking.
In that crucial swing state, 342,556 names were listed as apparently registered to vote in both Virginia and another state.
To make this even more sinister, the lists that Rolling Stone managed to obtain showed that the lists were targeting Democrats:
According to our analysis, the Crosscheck list disproportionately threatens solid Democratic constituencies: young, black, Hispanic and Asian-American voters - with some of the biggest possible purges underway in Ohio and North Carolina, two crucial swing states with tight Senate races.
One enthusiastic person who signed up was Ohio's right-wing Secretary of State, Jon Husted. Ohio's list has flagged almost 500,000 people! Rolling Stone noticed that a lot of these so-called double voters were from poor, minority neighborhoods. One voting rights attorney said there is only one reason John Husted is doing this:
"He doesn't want to match middle names, because he doesn't want real matches. They're targeting people with clearly defined ethnic names that typically vote for the Democratic Party. He wants to win Ohio the only way he knows how - by taking away the rights of citizens to vote."
Mark Swedlund, a database expert whose clients include eBay and American Express, who looked at the data and was shocked. His exact words were:
"God forbid your name is Garcia, of which there are 858,000 in the U.S., and your first name is Joseph or Jose. You're probably suspected of voting in 27 states."
As anyone who is rational can tell you, if you want to commit voter fraud, there is simply not a more inefficient way to do it than to register in two states to vote. First, you risk tens of thousands in fines, a criminal record, and multiple years in prison. Second, you would likely have to drive several hours in between states to commit this act.
All of this effort and risk--for voting TWICE. That is colossally stupid. That is why this type of fraud is virtually non-existent.
AND YET, according to Kobach's Crosscheck, there are currently 7.2 million people that are suspected of doing just that.
The irony of all of this is that there is a type of voting fraud that is rampant, but the GOP doesn't want to touch it. Here in Florida, "boleteros," or absentee ballot collectors, are hired. Some are not quite ethical, including one that Gov. Rick Scott put on the payroll. (In that article, I noted that he won in Miami-Dade, one of the most liberal counties in the nation, with well over 20,000 absentee ballots.)
But this was never about vote integrity. This is about keeping the "wrong kinds of people" from voting. With Virginia, there is simply no excuse for this. For Georgia, North Carolina, Ohio, and others, we need to speak out. Now.
Many Latinos have registered to vote for the first time ever in this election because of the bigotry and hate that is Donald Trump. Unless we bring more attention to this outrage, they may not get that chance.
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