Obviously, there's no reason to have the same level of identity proof required to buy cigarettes, get on a plane, cash a check, etc., to vote, as there's no such thing as people voting who shouldn't have. And besides, you're a racist, right wing hate monger if you make voters show proof of identity because it unfairly inhibits minority voting. (Just think about that statement... its proponents are claiming that minorities are too stupid or incapable of obtaining identification to vote and therefore most be protected from themselves.)
Well, guess again. According to Byron York of the Washington Examiner, vote fraud gave us the colossal embarrassment that is Senator Al Franken of Minnesota:
Franken and his Democratic allies dispatched an army of lawyers to challenge the results. After the first canvass, Coleman's lead was down to 206 votes. That was followed by months of wrangling and litigation. In the end, Franken was declared the winner by 312 votes. He was sworn into office in July 2009, eight months after the election.
During the controversy a conservative group called Minnesota Majority began to look into claims of voter fraud. Comparing criminal records with voting rolls, the group identified 1,099 felons -- all ineligible to vote -- who had voted in the Franken-Coleman race.
Minnesota Majority took the information to prosecutors across the state, many of whom showed no interest in pursuing it. But Minnesota law requires authorities to investigate such leads. And so far, Fund and von Spakovsky report, 177 people have been convicted -- not just accused, but convicted -- of voting fraudulently in the Senate race. Another 66 are awaiting trial. "The numbers aren't greater," the authors say, "because the standard for convicting someone of voter fraud in Minnesota is that they must have been both ineligible, and 'knowingly' voted unlawfully." The accused can get off by claiming not to have known they did anything wrong.
Still, that's a total of 243 people either convicted of voter fraud or awaiting trial in an election that was decided by 312 votes. With 1,099 examples identified by Minnesota Majority, and with evidence suggesting that felons, when they do vote, strongly favor Democrats, it doesn't require a leap to suggest there might one day be proof that Al Franken was elected on the strength of voter fraud.
And that's just the question of voting by felons. Minnesota Majority also found all sorts of other irregularities that cast further doubt on the Senate results.
The election was particularly important because Franken's victory gave Senate Democrats a 60th vote in favor of President Obama's national health care proposal -- the deciding vote to overcome a Republican filibuster. If Coleman had kept his seat, there would have been no 60th vote, and no Obamacare.
Voter fraud matters when contests are close. When an election is decided by a huge margin, no one can plausibly claim fraud made the difference. But the Minnesota race was excruciatingly close. And then, in the Obamacare debate, Democrats could not afford to lose even a single vote. So if there were any case that demonstrates that voter fraud both exists and has real consequences, it is Minnesota 2008.What a shame that the Democrat party must resort to fraud and deceit to win at the ballot box. Of course, they've been doing it a long, long time.
Remember this come November when a nation--badly shaken by four years of economic horror inflicted upon the it by the President's (and Congressional Democrat) policies--looks like it is rejecting the 'enlightened' leadership of its political elite.
Read the whole article here.
Hat tip:Instapundit
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