The real crime is allowing just anybody to vote

By Joe Soucheray

Updated: 07/13/2010 11:00:21 PM CDT

More convicted felons might have voted in 2008 than the margin of victory enjoyed by Al Franken over Norm Coleman, although it must be noted that we have no evidence a convicted felon would have favored Al over Norm. For all we know, convicted felons, who for the most part are ineligible to vote, rallied their illicit forces to turn out for Coleman in the belief, somewhat plausible, that he was the more limited-government, free-market candidate. Norm probably wouldn't have asked Elena Kagan about her favorite "Perry Mason" episode, either.

That margin of victory, remember, was only 312 votes when all was said and done. A conservative-leaning group, Minnesota Majority, referred hundreds of names of people it believed had voted illegally to the Ramsey County attorney's office. The group has been labeled, dutifully, as conservative, just as I am sure we would have labeled a left-leaning group had the fortunes been reversed.

In any event, Fox News made a big splash with the story, breaking it with the implication that a study of specific voter fraud has been ongoing since the election. Yes, but all elections are studied after the fact, and after every election, voting officials usually find mischief and chicanery. Besides, even if every referral turns out to be an illegal voter, the results of the 2008 election cannot be changed.

Minnesota Majority knows that and wishes only to alert the lot of us that we might consider, for example, requiring voters to have identification
when they go to the polls. Here again, convicted felons could present a valid driver's license that would not indicate that they are felons.
So what really compelled Minnesota Majority to study voting records measured against available felony data? Well, if I might take a stab at it, you can't rig an election without significant confusion. I'm not at all saying that the 2008 election was rigged. I'm merely deducing that you cannot rig an election, any election, without confusion. We had such significant confusion following the Senate race in 2008 that it took six months to sort it out, and as we now know, we are not entirely certain that it was ever sorted out when you factor in, well, felons.

By significant confusion we should understand that voting champions on the left have elevated the fear of "disenfranchisement'' to that of, say, pestilence and famine, or nuclear war. You need identification to buy a pack of cigarettes, but asking a voter to display valid identification strikes such concern in the hearts of voting champions that they shout it as loudly as possible: Disenfranchisement, disenfranchisement.

Disingenuous is more like it.

To safeguard against this imagined disenfranchisement — there being no need to; we are not an evil republic — we have seen all sorts of developments, earlier voting and more absentee voting, because, you know, it is just too burdensome to expect somebody to actually get to the polls on voting day. Why, that would be unfair.

We are throwing a great big net out there every time there is an election, and by the time we drag it to shore, we have captured people who might be felons, who don't have ID, who have no idea who the candidates are and who cannot even fill in a small oval with a pencil.

Most insidious, we have seen the creeping scam known as instant runoff voting, in which candidates who do not get a majority of votes can still win. The crowd in the net ought to do well with IRV.

It used to be that responsible citizens got up on election morning, figured out a way to get to the polls, exercised their informed privilege and went off to work. These days? It's a crapshoot, and if anybody stands the risk of disenfranchisement, it is the responsible, informed citizen.

Joe Soucheray can be reached at jsoucheray@pioneerpress.com or 651-228-5474. Soucheray is heard from 2 to 6 p.m. weekdays on KSTP-AM 1500.

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Illegal Alien Voters Ignored by Justice Dept., Says Whistleblower
http://www.alipac.us/ftopict-205217-heritage.html