Voter Fraud Fraud

The Democratic Party sends me stuff. The latest is from Donna Brazile. You may remember Ms. Brazile. During the time when she was a CNN news analyst, she was also secretly providing Presidential Debate questions in advance to Hillary Clinton so that Hillary could pretend to be smarter than she is … in other words, Donna’s a common crook who is more than willing to lie for her cause. It is a mystery why anyone would listen to her after she’s demonstrated that, but what do I know, I was born yesterday …

In any case, as a reward for her duplicity, she now shills for the Democratic Party. Her latest screed contained the following claim:

And last week, we hit rock bottom when Kris Kobach — the man behind some of this country’s most severe voting restrictions, hand-picked by Trump to run this new sham of a commission — demanded that each state hand over its voter rolls.

Handing over all your personal information, including your political party and voting history, to Donald Trump? I don’t think so. Thank God almost every state has refused this absurd request.

Let me note that Donna is being Donna, which is to say, once again she is lying through her teeth. In a lovely example of recursion, she is perpetrating a fraud about voter fraud. To demonstrate this, I’ll start with the backstory, which most know.

After the election, President Trump claimed that he would have won the popular vote were it not for voter fraud. That would involve a swing of a couple of million votes, which seems most unlikely to me.

However, that doesn’t mean that voter fraud is non-existent. And the President played this issue beautifully. As I noted at the time, he kept making the same unbelievable claim of widespread fraud. The media quickly got fed up and basically said “OK, prove it. We’re tired of your election fraud BS. Put up or shut up”.

At which point, the President said in essence “Well, since you’ve insisted over and over that I prove voter fraud exists, I’ve created the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity.”

And to bring this up to the present, since then a number of states have refused to cooperate with the Presidential Commission. In general, the state officials have put forward some version of the same lie that Donna is pushing above. They are claiming that they are being asked to reveal private data, and by gosh, they are noble warriors who are going to protect their citizenry from the terrible Trump people wanting sensitive personal information.

So … where is the lie?

Well, the lie is that they were ever asked to turn over private or sensitive data. Below is a quote from a typical letter requesting the voter data. This one went to Maine, but other than the state name it’s a mass mailing. Here’s the important part of the form letter from the President’s Commission requesting the Maine data, emphasis mine:

In addition, in order for the Commission to fully analyze vulnerabilities and issues related to voter registration and voting, I am requesting that you provide to the Commission the publicly available voter roll data for Maine, including, if publicly available under the laws of your state, the full first and last names of all registrants, middle names or initials if available, addresses, dates of birth, political party (if recorded in your state), last four digits of social security number if available, voter history (elections voted in) from 2006 onward, active/inactive status, cancelled status, information regarding any felony convictions, information regarding voter registration in another state, information regarding military status, and overseas citizen information. SOURCE 

So despite Donna’s deceptions, there is no request for private or sensitive data. The letter is perfectly clear on that point. They say twice that they only want what is publicly available. They’re not in search of confidential data, they’re looking for voter fraud. You know, this kind of stuff.

SOURCE

I did laugh when I read the statement by our own California Secretary Of State, Alex Padilla, viz:

“The President’s commission has requested the personal data and the voting history of every American voter–including Californians. As Secretary of State, it is my duty to ensure the integrity of our elections and to protect the voting rights and privacy of our state’s voters. I will not provide sensitive voter information to a commission that has already inaccurately passed judgment that millions of Californians voted illegally. California’s participation would only serve to legitimize the false and already debunked claims of massive voter fraud made by the President, the Vice President, and Mr. Kobach

Just like Ms. Brazile, Secretary Padilla is lying. He has NOT been asked to release any sensitive or private data of any type. He has been asked to release publicly available data, and he is lying about that request.

What made me laugh was his claim that if he actually turns over publicly available data,  it would “legitimize” the claims of voter fraud … how does that work? Seems like concealing the voter data legitimizes the claims.

I say that because one of my rules of thumb is that when a man is hiding something … it’s because he’s got something to hide. Makes me wonder why California officials are so reluctant to provide the voter data …

Best to all of you on this lovely summer day, an afternoon replete with hummingbirds, buzzards and butterflies.

w.