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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsIf they fake houses can they fake voter registrations
is an interesting question and might tie in to the question of so many ballots with only a vote for a single candidate and nobody else on the ballot. In other words were some registrations faked and then used for absentee fakery etc.?
Did a verification of registration process only verify data in a computer versus actual verification? Could people responsible for verification just rubber stamp registrations without doing any real verification? Let me give you an example of how fake houses and lack of verification worked in a tax/financing proposal a few years ago.
Cities across America use TIF (Tax Incremental Financing) Districts to establish areas of blighted properties and then borrow funds against proposed improvements by developers etc. There are limits within the laws and various criteria about percentages of properties declared as blight, dollar values etc. Most smaller cities use outside consultants to generate the proposals. I recall one such proposal very well. A rather "inventive" city leadership had submitted all of the very voluminous materials for a public review along with fancy artists sketches of how the beautiful improvements would look. But nobody was really looking at the backup documentation. I "waste" much of my life doing things others don't. So I started to go street by street because I never really felt the proposed geographical area was really that blighted.
So in the documentation they listed the address of each and every property, the assessed value and whether it was declared blighted. Well let me tell you my shock after checking the first few and discovering that addresses were listed that didn't exist. The list would show 6 houses on a street when there were only 4. Not because of vacant lots etc. Likewise they would have a house listed as existing, along with an assessed value, when in fact the old house had been torn down for over a decade. It was not just a few discrepancies either. Given the discrepancies they would not be able to make the funding formula criteria work for their desired projects.
Now when I pointed out these matters you can imagine how popular I became. So when I asked the consultant where he got the info he said it came from the city. The city said the consultant "drove" the area. Fingers pointing in all directions. Needless to say nobody wanted to answer the question about why people had signed documents approving the proposal without apparently verifying anything. Golly gee you don't suppose it may not have been "honest mistakes" do you? The people who signed knew the area even better than me.
So I give you this example of how addresses for nonexistent property came to be because some people apparently wanted them for their own reasons. So did some people who "wanted" something fail to do any real verification of "documents". Since on-line registration can be done, documents faked etc. can that also be exacerbated by people who "override" any checks? Did anybody take the time to be sure those people really existed or was it just a matter of verifying the submission of documents rather than the validity of the documents?
So is it something or is it nothing? I had people call me crazy until I drove them through the "blighted" area and showed them the documentation to their face. Maybe it's worth someone checking whether someone faked registrations. Maybe it's worth asking in light of the sudden 180 degree turn by the GQP from being against early voting/absentee voting to being all for it in spades.
tritsofme
(18,530 posts)moniss
(5,742 posts)The huge number of ballots with only a single vote are highly unusual as others have pointed out. As I pointed out public officials will "game the system" depending on if they want something. So that's why my question of being able to fake things in order to get what someone wants. Let me see, I seem to remember a really shitty actor from years ago who said something about "Trust but verified".
Actual verification as opposed to just putting a check-mark in a computer that a particular document was presented are two vastly different things.
magicarpet
(16,514 posts)Poor thing has not eaten a decent meal in about three weeks.
Could you add him to the voting fraud investigatory team ? He's got a nose to root out fraud.