All,
I can't resist putting this under the heading,
"Reverend Jesse Jackson! Be careful what you wish for!"
=========================
To view this item online, visit
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/bluesky_repack/20001215_xrpkg_congress_t.shtml
Friday, December 15, 2000
ELECTION 2000
Congress to establish voter-fraud task force
Nationwide investigation will 'put people in jail,' says top GOP leader
by Kenneth R. Timmerman
House Speaker Dennis J. Hastert is putting together a task force to
investigate allegations of voter fraud in the November 7 election that will be
nationwide in scope and will "put people in jail," according to a top member of
the Republican leadership.
Hastert initially asked outgoing Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry Hyde,
R-Ill, to chair the task force, but Hyde says he turned it down. Hyde is the
leading candidate to become the new chairman of the House International
Relations Committee, in front of two moderate Republicans, Jim Leach and
Doug Bereuter.
Republicans will be looking at allegations of voter fraud from across the
country, not just in Florida.
"In Madison, Wisconsin, we had homeless shelters with 20 beds where 200
people voted," said a top member of the leadership, who asked to remain
unnamed for this report. "In Wisconsin, you can just show up at the polls on
election day and vote without being registered by saying that you have just
moved into the precinct. In some predominantly Democratic precincts in
Texas, we had 125 percent of registered voters cast ballots."
The voter-fraud task force will also examine allegations that the Department
of Defense shut down mail call for U.S. military vessels on overseas
deployment two weeks before the election, to prevent absentee ballots from
being delivered to U.S. Navy personnel or returned by them to their home
districts.
Sam Wright, a retired U.S. Navy captain and lawyer who advocates a major
overhaul of the military voting system, believes that 200,000 members of the
military and their family get systematically disenfranchised.
"That's based on the survey that DoD does after every presidential election,"
said Wright. "I am now coming to believe that the 200,000 figure is a gross
understatement. The DoD survey only shows what military members know."
Motor voters
And in Baltimore, Chicago and Los Angeles, allegations are surfacing of roving
bands of voters who were taken in buses from precinct to precinct to vote in
place of registered voters who had moved away or who had never voted
before.
"We are relatively certain people were being taken from polling place to
polling place and allowed to vote," said Republican national committeewoman
from Maryland, Ellen Sauerbrey.
How can someone vote in place of another? Actually, it's fairly simple -- for
the fraudulently inclined.
In many states, including Maryland, it is illegal to ask voters to present
identification, on the pretext that would be construed as voter intimidation.
Election officials in Maryland and in many other states are allowed to
ascertain a voter's true identity by asking only for their name, address and
date of birth.
"But in practice, there's no check whatsoever," Sauerbrey said. "The election
judge will prompt you by asking if you live at such and such address, if you
were born at such and such date. This makes it easier for one person to vote
in the name of another, simply by mimicking the signature on the voter
card."
Repeated attempts by Republicans in Maryland to pass legislation that would
require voters to present identification at the polls have been blocked by the
Democratic majority in the state's House of Delegates.
No citizenship checks
The motor voter rules (known officially as the National Voter Registration Act
of 1993) went into effect in January 1995, and required states to allow
anyone applying for a drivers license to register to vote at the same time.
The problem, admitted board of election officials in several Maryland
counties, is that no proof of citizenship is required, thus inviting non-citizens
to vote by fraud.
An elections-board official in Montgomery County, Md., who declined to be
identified, acknowledged there was "no cross-checking" to see if people who
registered to vote at the Motor Vehicle Agency are U.S. citizens. "We don't
require them to present ID to vote."
When individuals register to vote at the Motor Vehicle Agency, they are
required to sign a form stating they are U.S. citizens "under penalty of
perjury." However, those forms are only delivered to the MVA in English,
whereas many non-English speakers regularly apply for drivers licenses and,
by extension, register to vote.
Spanish-language voter registration forms are sent out with state recruiters,
who sign up new voters through a wide variety of state welfare agencies, the
official added. She could not explain why Spanish-language voter registration
forms would be needed for naturalized U.S. citizens, who are required to pass
an English-language test as part of their naturalization examination.
Maryland has "no way to check" if non-citizens are voting, state supervisor of
elections Linda Lamone said. "We approached the Immigration and
Naturalization Service at one point and asked if we could collaborate on this,
so people wouldn't get in trouble, but they said no."
About the only way the county or state board of election discovers that a
non-citizen has made the voter rolls is when they are called for jury duty.
Montgomery County Jury Commissioner Nancy Galvin said her office sends
out 10,000 to 12,000 questionnaires every other month to prospective jurors,
asking whether they are U.S. citizens. Non-citizens are not allowed to sit on
juries.
"We've had many of them returned asking to be excused from jury duty
because they are not U.S. citizens," she said. However, she said her office
"keeps no records" of these replies, and takes no further action. A
spokesperson for Montgomery County State's Attorney Doug Gansler said it
was "not an offense" to do jury duty as a non-citizen and that his office "has
not prosecuted anyone for this" or for perjury on the motor voter forms.
In Prince George's County, a heavily Democratic county bordering
Washington, D.C., election board official Harold Reston said the board reviews
each case individually that is sent over by the jury commissioner.
"If we find that they registered by accident and never voted, we call the
individual and ask them to request that they be removed from the voter
rolls," he said. "But if they actually voted, we might forward the case to the
state prosecutor."
Mike Mcdonough, an assistant to state prosecutor Stephen Montanarelli, said
his office has had several hundred election-law cases since motor voter went
into effect in January 1995, but had conducted no prosecutions over the past
six or eight months.
"Prosecution is not the standard thing that happens in this sort of case," he
said. "We try to dispose of it short of prosecution."
A silver lining
U.S. Rep. Bob Stump, R-Ariz., has twice introduced a bill to repeal motor
voter in the U.S. Congress, only to have it vetoed by President Clinton. He
recently vowed to reintroduce the legislation in the 107th Congress next
year.
But not everyone believes that motor voter is all bad. Maryland Republican
activist and statistician Henry C. Marshall has done a comprehensive analysis
of new registrations in Maryland over the past five years and found that
motor voter has actually reduced the Democrats' share from 61.2 percent of
total voters to 57.1 percent.
Part of the shift has been a surge in new voters registering as Independents.
But it has also resulted from cleansing the voter rolls of the estimated 17-20
percent of voters who leave the state every year. Under motor voter rules,
the state board of elections may use change-of-address forms filed with the
MVA to purge former residents from the rolls.
Marshall believes the biggest problem is not motor voter itself, but the failure
to require new voters to provide proof of citizenship when they sign up to
vote.
"In 1996, 11 percent of the people voting in Maryland were non-citizens,"
Marshall believes. Out of the 1,793,991 votes officially cast, that amounts to
197,339 illegal votes.
While it's virtually impossible to verify such figures, they suggest the
potential scope of the problem nationwide, especially in states with close
elections.
The midnight coup
Ellen Sauerbrey became an unwilling expert on election fraud following her
1994 bid to become Maryland's governor, which she lost to Democrat Parris
Glendening. All during election night as precincts reported in, Sauerbrey
remained ahead. Then, close to midnight, results started pouring in from
precincts in Baltimore City, giving Glendening a 5,993-vote victory. It was
the closest race in Maryland in 70 years.
To this day, Sauerbrey and her running mate, former Howard County police
chief Paul Rappaport, believe the election was stolen by Democratic party
operatives who stuffed ballot boxes and altered voting machines after the
polls were closed.
Sauerbrey's failed challenge of the 1994 election results dragged through the
courts for more than six months, and her opponents accused her of being a
sore loser.
Drake Ferguson, a private investigator who headed a volunteer group that
helped document Sauerbrey's allegations of voter fraud, found that 75
percent of Baltimore City's 408 precincts had "severe flaws" in election-day
records, including election cards that were either unsigned or had names
different from the printed name on them.
The group also claimed that 5,832 more votes were tallied in Baltimore City
than there were voters who checked in at precincts or cast absentee ballots --
mirroring Glendening's election margin almost exactly. They found that keys
to voting machines had been duplicated, and that some people had voted
more than once. Sauerbrey even remembers investigators reporting back to
her that they had traced the addresses listed by scores of Baltimore City
voters to boarded-up houses and to vacant lots.
But Glendening's appointee to head the state board of elections, Linda
Lamone, rejected Sauerbrey's allegations of fraud, noting that a Democratic
trial court judge and the state attorney general, also a Democrat, had found
they had "no merit."
Asked whether Maryland had a problem with voter fraud, Lamone said, "No, I
do not think there is a problem."
I can't resist putting this under the heading,
"Reverend Jesse Jackson! Be careful what you wish for!"
=========================
To view this item online, visit
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/bluesky_repack/20001215_xrpkg_congress_t.shtml
Friday, December 15, 2000
ELECTION 2000
Congress to establish voter-fraud task force
Nationwide investigation will 'put people in jail,' says top GOP leader
by Kenneth R. Timmerman
House Speaker Dennis J. Hastert is putting together a task force to
investigate allegations of voter fraud in the November 7 election that will be
nationwide in scope and will "put people in jail," according to a top member of
the Republican leadership.
Hastert initially asked outgoing Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry Hyde,
R-Ill, to chair the task force, but Hyde says he turned it down. Hyde is the
leading candidate to become the new chairman of the House International
Relations Committee, in front of two moderate Republicans, Jim Leach and
Doug Bereuter.
Republicans will be looking at allegations of voter fraud from across the
country, not just in Florida.
"In Madison, Wisconsin, we had homeless shelters with 20 beds where 200
people voted," said a top member of the leadership, who asked to remain
unnamed for this report. "In Wisconsin, you can just show up at the polls on
election day and vote without being registered by saying that you have just
moved into the precinct. In some predominantly Democratic precincts in
Texas, we had 125 percent of registered voters cast ballots."
The voter-fraud task force will also examine allegations that the Department
of Defense shut down mail call for U.S. military vessels on overseas
deployment two weeks before the election, to prevent absentee ballots from
being delivered to U.S. Navy personnel or returned by them to their home
districts.
Sam Wright, a retired U.S. Navy captain and lawyer who advocates a major
overhaul of the military voting system, believes that 200,000 members of the
military and their family get systematically disenfranchised.
"That's based on the survey that DoD does after every presidential election,"
said Wright. "I am now coming to believe that the 200,000 figure is a gross
understatement. The DoD survey only shows what military members know."
Motor voters
And in Baltimore, Chicago and Los Angeles, allegations are surfacing of roving
bands of voters who were taken in buses from precinct to precinct to vote in
place of registered voters who had moved away or who had never voted
before.
"We are relatively certain people were being taken from polling place to
polling place and allowed to vote," said Republican national committeewoman
from Maryland, Ellen Sauerbrey.
How can someone vote in place of another? Actually, it's fairly simple -- for
the fraudulently inclined.
In many states, including Maryland, it is illegal to ask voters to present
identification, on the pretext that would be construed as voter intimidation.
Election officials in Maryland and in many other states are allowed to
ascertain a voter's true identity by asking only for their name, address and
date of birth.
"But in practice, there's no check whatsoever," Sauerbrey said. "The election
judge will prompt you by asking if you live at such and such address, if you
were born at such and such date. This makes it easier for one person to vote
in the name of another, simply by mimicking the signature on the voter
card."
Repeated attempts by Republicans in Maryland to pass legislation that would
require voters to present identification at the polls have been blocked by the
Democratic majority in the state's House of Delegates.
No citizenship checks
The motor voter rules (known officially as the National Voter Registration Act
of 1993) went into effect in January 1995, and required states to allow
anyone applying for a drivers license to register to vote at the same time.
The problem, admitted board of election officials in several Maryland
counties, is that no proof of citizenship is required, thus inviting non-citizens
to vote by fraud.
An elections-board official in Montgomery County, Md., who declined to be
identified, acknowledged there was "no cross-checking" to see if people who
registered to vote at the Motor Vehicle Agency are U.S. citizens. "We don't
require them to present ID to vote."
When individuals register to vote at the Motor Vehicle Agency, they are
required to sign a form stating they are U.S. citizens "under penalty of
perjury." However, those forms are only delivered to the MVA in English,
whereas many non-English speakers regularly apply for drivers licenses and,
by extension, register to vote.
Spanish-language voter registration forms are sent out with state recruiters,
who sign up new voters through a wide variety of state welfare agencies, the
official added. She could not explain why Spanish-language voter registration
forms would be needed for naturalized U.S. citizens, who are required to pass
an English-language test as part of their naturalization examination.
Maryland has "no way to check" if non-citizens are voting, state supervisor of
elections Linda Lamone said. "We approached the Immigration and
Naturalization Service at one point and asked if we could collaborate on this,
so people wouldn't get in trouble, but they said no."
About the only way the county or state board of election discovers that a
non-citizen has made the voter rolls is when they are called for jury duty.
Montgomery County Jury Commissioner Nancy Galvin said her office sends
out 10,000 to 12,000 questionnaires every other month to prospective jurors,
asking whether they are U.S. citizens. Non-citizens are not allowed to sit on
juries.
"We've had many of them returned asking to be excused from jury duty
because they are not U.S. citizens," she said. However, she said her office
"keeps no records" of these replies, and takes no further action. A
spokesperson for Montgomery County State's Attorney Doug Gansler said it
was "not an offense" to do jury duty as a non-citizen and that his office "has
not prosecuted anyone for this" or for perjury on the motor voter forms.
In Prince George's County, a heavily Democratic county bordering
Washington, D.C., election board official Harold Reston said the board reviews
each case individually that is sent over by the jury commissioner.
"If we find that they registered by accident and never voted, we call the
individual and ask them to request that they be removed from the voter
rolls," he said. "But if they actually voted, we might forward the case to the
state prosecutor."
Mike Mcdonough, an assistant to state prosecutor Stephen Montanarelli, said
his office has had several hundred election-law cases since motor voter went
into effect in January 1995, but had conducted no prosecutions over the past
six or eight months.
"Prosecution is not the standard thing that happens in this sort of case," he
said. "We try to dispose of it short of prosecution."
A silver lining
U.S. Rep. Bob Stump, R-Ariz., has twice introduced a bill to repeal motor
voter in the U.S. Congress, only to have it vetoed by President Clinton. He
recently vowed to reintroduce the legislation in the 107th Congress next
year.
But not everyone believes that motor voter is all bad. Maryland Republican
activist and statistician Henry C. Marshall has done a comprehensive analysis
of new registrations in Maryland over the past five years and found that
motor voter has actually reduced the Democrats' share from 61.2 percent of
total voters to 57.1 percent.
Part of the shift has been a surge in new voters registering as Independents.
But it has also resulted from cleansing the voter rolls of the estimated 17-20
percent of voters who leave the state every year. Under motor voter rules,
the state board of elections may use change-of-address forms filed with the
MVA to purge former residents from the rolls.
Marshall believes the biggest problem is not motor voter itself, but the failure
to require new voters to provide proof of citizenship when they sign up to
vote.
"In 1996, 11 percent of the people voting in Maryland were non-citizens,"
Marshall believes. Out of the 1,793,991 votes officially cast, that amounts to
197,339 illegal votes.
While it's virtually impossible to verify such figures, they suggest the
potential scope of the problem nationwide, especially in states with close
elections.
The midnight coup
Ellen Sauerbrey became an unwilling expert on election fraud following her
1994 bid to become Maryland's governor, which she lost to Democrat Parris
Glendening. All during election night as precincts reported in, Sauerbrey
remained ahead. Then, close to midnight, results started pouring in from
precincts in Baltimore City, giving Glendening a 5,993-vote victory. It was
the closest race in Maryland in 70 years.
To this day, Sauerbrey and her running mate, former Howard County police
chief Paul Rappaport, believe the election was stolen by Democratic party
operatives who stuffed ballot boxes and altered voting machines after the
polls were closed.
Sauerbrey's failed challenge of the 1994 election results dragged through the
courts for more than six months, and her opponents accused her of being a
sore loser.
Drake Ferguson, a private investigator who headed a volunteer group that
helped document Sauerbrey's allegations of voter fraud, found that 75
percent of Baltimore City's 408 precincts had "severe flaws" in election-day
records, including election cards that were either unsigned or had names
different from the printed name on them.
The group also claimed that 5,832 more votes were tallied in Baltimore City
than there were voters who checked in at precincts or cast absentee ballots --
mirroring Glendening's election margin almost exactly. They found that keys
to voting machines had been duplicated, and that some people had voted
more than once. Sauerbrey even remembers investigators reporting back to
her that they had traced the addresses listed by scores of Baltimore City
voters to boarded-up houses and to vacant lots.
But Glendening's appointee to head the state board of elections, Linda
Lamone, rejected Sauerbrey's allegations of fraud, noting that a Democratic
trial court judge and the state attorney general, also a Democrat, had found
they had "no merit."
Asked whether Maryland had a problem with voter fraud, Lamone said, "No, I
do not think there is a problem."