===
.jpg)
More on Obama's Iranian folly. (See 1 below.)
Meanwhile, The New York Times continues its editorial bias against Israel. (See 1a below.)
And also southerners. See immediately below.
| |||
Or, copy and paste this URL into your browser:http://nyti.ms/1we620F
Meanwhile, the Arabs have moved on but Obama and the New York Times remain trapped in their distorted bitterness. (See 1b below.) Just another day of friendly Fatah hatred. (See 1c and 1d below.) === My friend, who is chairing Gov. Deal and David Perdue's Senate Campaigns in Chatham County asked me to attend a meeting today at which Perdue spoke.. I agreed to come. Though my candidate, for our next senator was Jack Kingston and I have not been enthusiastic about Perdue, I must say I was impressed, not only with his physical presence but also with what he had to say and the way he expressed his thoughts. He reaffirmed why I voted for him over Ms. "Stealth" Nunn. Our nation is going in the wrong direction and her ties to Reid and Obama are more than I can stomach. notwithstanding, her contrary pronouncements . === My friend, John Fund and an associate have written copiously about voter fraud. Voting is one of the great rights and privileges that separates our republic from so many other nations and yet, voter fraud is one of the more pressing concerns because Democrats are desperate. Illegal but registered voters could well decide close elections and also where absentee mail in is prevalent. This is a sad state of affairs. Atty. Gen. Holder was Obama's choice because Obama knew Holder would manipulate the law to frustrate states seeking to make fraudulent voting more difficult. (See 2 and 2a below.) Also click on:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhjq6y1frPQ === Dick | |||
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1)Obama’s Iran folly
The Wall Street Journal reports the trend we have remarked on for some time:
The Obama administration and Iran, engaged in direct nuclear negotiations and facing a common threat from Islamic State militants, have moved into an effective state of détente over the past year, according to senior U.S. and Arab officials.
The shift could drastically alter the balance of power in the region, and risks alienating key U.S. allies such as Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates who are central to the coalition fighting Islamic State. Sunni Arab leaders view the threat posed by Shiite Iran as equal to or greater than that posed by the Sunni radical group Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL.
Israel contends the U.S. has weakened the terms of its negotiations with Iran and played down Tehran’s destabilizing role in the region.
This, strictly speaking, is not detente, which involves mutual restraint, but appeasement in which friends are sacrificed to keep enemies at bay. Of course, soon we will have no friends and the enemy will be unrestrained. We do seem to be moving in that direction.
The untenable positions resulting from this — heckling Israel about its conduct of the war in Gaza, allowing Bashar al-Assad to continue his mass murder, and refusing to contemplate more sanctions as Iran remains the world’s leading sponsor of terror and abuses its own people — seem not to bother the president. Refusing to support the Green Revolution, then, was not an error, but a feature, of this wonderful new world in which we ally with one of the most heinous regimes on the planet. Are we to give Iran its own sphere of influence and let our allies be damned? Let Iran become a nuclear threshold state and try to bully Israel into accepting the new status quo? If so, we are most of the way there.
This is not only a geopolitical nightmare but a moral abomination. Understand, as the Foreign Policy Initiative notes, “President Hassan Rouhani has failed to fulfill his pledges to promote ‘equal civil rights’ in Iran and advance a ‘constructive approach to diplomacy.’ Instead, he has presided over a regime that continues to support wide-ranging political repression, religious persecution, and global terrorism. In the most recent high-profile abuse, Tehran on Saturday executed a 26-year-old woman for killing the man she said attempted to rape her, defying sustained international pressure for her release and spurning charges that the regime had elicited her confession by force.” In virtually every category from domestic repression to international behavior, things have gotten worse.
That is the penalty we pay — and ask innocents to pay — so Obama can pursue his misguided appeasement policy.
Seen in that light, the obnoxious comments from an unnamed senior adviser about the elected representative of the Jewish State was a true reflection of the attitude that pervades the administration. Rather than blame and deal with the aggressor Iran for threats and chaos, it is now second nature to blame Israel for refusing to commit national suicide. The only error was being so transparent about it. (Netanyahu’s response was on point: “I am being attacked because I am willing to defend the State of Israel.”)
The president’s plan assumes that Congress will do nothing, that the American people will be thrilled with a deal that gives away the store to Iran (just like the president thought they would love the Taliban prisoner swap), that Israel will not defend itself and that our Sunni allies will roll over as well. Like with everything else, he is seriously mistaken.
Jennifer Rubin writes the Right Turn blog for The Post, offering reported opinion from a conservative perspective
1a)
New York Times Op-Ed Paints Israel as a Racist State
Following this summer’s Gaza conflict and increased tensions between Jews and Arabs, the issue of Israel’s treatment of its Arab minority has recently come to the fore. Israel’s President Reuven Rivlin has recently made great efforts to confront what is undeniably a genuine problem for Israeli society.
Enter the New York Times‘ contribution to the debate – an op-ed by Rula Jebreal that deals with an important issue by pushing an extreme agenda. Jebreal is an Italian-Palestinian journalist, novelist, and screenwriter with both Israeli and Italian citizenship. She was a commentator for MSNBC where she admonished the network and other American news networks live on-air, accusing U.S. media of being biased towards Israel during the Gaza conflict.
Jebreal has already demonstrated that she has an axe to grind when it comes to Israel and she pursues it with zeal in the New York Times where she:
- Accuses Israel of deliberately implementing legislation designed to curtail the civil rights of its Arab minority.
- Attacks the Law of Return as being discriminatory against Arabs.
- Removes vital context from security legislation to paint Israeli laws as inherently racist.
- Portrays the IDF as being dominated by religious soldiers, which in turn leads to religiously inspired racism.
- Misrepresents the policies of Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman.
According to Jebreal:
Israel is increasingly becoming a project of ethno-religious purity and exclusion.
She attacks Israel’s Law of Return and links to a database of “50 discriminatory laws” as maintained by the Adalah organization. NGO Monitor states that “contrary to Adalah’s ongoing attempts to portray Israel as anti-democratic and racist, including frequent events in the UN and other international platforms, many of the laws listed have nothing to do with Israeli Arabs nor could they be described as “discriminatory”.”
Regarding the Law of Return, Alexander Yakobson and Amnon Rubinstein point out that it
does not discriminate between citizens within the country. It does not make the citizenship of non-Jews in any way inferior. Rather it is directed entirely outward, to the Jews of the world. Therefore, implicit in the condemnation of the Law of Return is the assertion that Israel is forbidden to privilege Jews in its laws of immigration and citizenship.
They continue:
Once we recognize Israel as the national home of the Jewish people and as the realization of its right to self-determination, we cannot deny it the right to open its gates to members of that people. The Law of Return is a law of repatriation (returning to a national homeland). Its legitimacy derives from the existence of the Jewish people as a typical diaspora people and the existence of the State of Israel as the nation-state of that people. It is the right of a nation-state to grant preferential treatment in matters of immigration and acquisition of citizenship to members of its own ethnicity who are citizens of other countries.
Is Jebreal’s attack on the Law of Return, which is central to the Jewish identity of the Israeli state, evidence that she has a problem with the very legitimacy of Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people?
Jebreal writes:
Palestinian Israeli citizens, meanwhile, are subject to a ban on family reunification: If they marry a fellow Palestinian from the West Bank or Gaza, they are prohibited from living in Israel under the Citizenship and Entry Into Israel Law.
She does not mention that this law, which is worded as a temporary order, was passed in the wake of the so-called Second Intifada due to legitimate security concerns. The most recent extension of the law was approved as:
The Shin Bet believes that the population of those requesting family reunification poses a risk, due to the proven threat that it could provide assistance in carrying out terror attacks and espionage.In addition, it believes the security risk increases in light of regional developments, with an emphasis on the security situation in the Gaza Strip, the strengthening of extremist Islamic factions, the permanent nature of the Hamas government in Gaza and the strengthening of Islamic Jihad.
Jebreal claims that even before the passing of a controversial law, it was “virtually impossible for a Palestinian to buy or rent a home in any majority-Jewish city.” In fact, the Admissions Committees Law that she cites, applies in practice to small communities and villages that have historically admitted new residents based on selective criteria. Under Israeli law, there is nothing to prevent an Arab citizen of the country from buying or renting anywhere, including in majority-Jewish cities.
Jebreal further maintains:
Further ethnic separation is maintained by the education system. Aside from a few mixed schools, most educational institutions in Israel are divided into Arab and Jewish ones.
In fact, this division is a result of Israel’s efforts to protect minority rights by giving its Arab population the opportunity to learn in Arabic according to the community’s cultural norms. This is not a policy of negative discrimination as Jebreal would have the New York Times’ readers believe
According to Nurit Peled-Elhanan, a Hebrew University professor of sociology who has produced the most comprehensive survey of Israeli public school curriculums, not one positive reference to Palestinians exists in Israeli high school textbooks. Palestinians are described as either “Arab farmers with no nationality” or fearsome “terrorists,” as Professor Peled-Elhanan documented in her book “Palestine in Israeli School Books: Ideology and Propaganda in Education.”
In fact, this book by Peled-Elhanan was thoroughly debunked by Arnon Groiss, Director of Research at the Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace, who concluded:
it is clear that Dr. Peled-Elhanan set out with the objective of labeling the Israeli curriculum racist. Motivated by her personal political agenda rather than an investigative spirit, she shot her arrow and then drew a target around it – or stated her preconceived thesis and then tried to find evidence for it. That was not an easy task, since Israeli school textbooks do not contain significant racist material, but she was not deterred by this problem. She made a formidable effort to find supposed evidence, whatever the cost.. . .This heavily politicized and thus biased approach distorts the material to produce a picture to her liking. This is not a scholarly work.
Jebreal states:
Israel’s system of segregation has led to a situation where, according to a recent poll, 42 percent of Jews say they have never met a Palestinian.
Jebreal conveniently forgets that Israeli Jews shopped and ate in Palestinian towns without a second thought until the advent of the Palestinian Authority and the outbreak of violence and terror in 2000. It is not a “system of segregation” that has led to these poll results but the inherent risks to Israeli lives caused by Palestinian terrorism that has brought an end to the days when Jews and Arabs mixed freely together.
Jebreal makes a bizarre claim that ultra-Orthodox Jews play a pivotal role in the IDF and that the Israeli army is dominated by religion:
The greater integration of ultra-Orthodox Jews clearly offers benefits to Jewish Israelis, but for Palestinian Israeli citizens, it has meant a new, religiously inspired racism, on top of the old secular discrimination.
Just what is Jebreal arguing? That Arab citizens of Israel are exempted from service in the IDF is in order not to place them in the uncomfortable position of having to take up arms against their cousins in neighboring countries. Israeli Arabs are able, however, to volunteer for IDF service and, indeed, many Arabs, particularly in Druze and Bedouin communities serve with distinction. There is no evidence that a small increase in ultra-Orthodox Jews serving in the IDF is encouraging “religiously inspired racism.”
Jebreal’s screed continues:
National leaders proudly promote hate policies. Israel’s foreign minister and the leader of the secular nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu party, Avigdor Lieberman, has championed a call to boycott the businesses of Palestinian citizens of Israel and, ominously, has even sought to make the “transfer” of Palestinians legal.
Neither of these so-call “hate policies” are the policies of the government of Israel and Jebreal leaves out vital context. Lieberman’s call for a boycott was specifically aimed at those businesses taking part in a general strike supporting Palestinians in Gaza and condemning Operation Protective Edge, not Arab businesses in general.
Likewise, Jebreal even links to an article that contradicts her claim that Lieberman endorses “transfer.” The report clearly states Lieberman’s assertion that his plan would involve moving Israel’s border and not moving people and specifically rejects the term “transfer.” Furthermore:
the move would comply with international law on condition that it were done with the consent of the Palestinians, did not leave anyone without citizenship and included a mechanism for providing compensation, similar to the one used with Jewish settlers during Israel’s 2005 disengagement from the Gaza Strip.
In any event, Jebreal opines against policies that are not Israeli law and are not even on the legislative radar at this time.
Jebreal concludes:
While Israel (like the United States) claims to abhor racism and human rights violations elsewhere, the country’s political leadership is actively enacting laws that ensure a pervasive institutionalized system of discrimination. What Israel needs, conversely, is a civil rights movement.
As demonstrated above, Israel’s political leadership is not actively promoting a “pervasive institutionalized system of discrimination.” Israel is instead grappling with how best to ensure its Arab minority has every opportunity open to it and all of the legal and democratic rights that Israel’s Jewish citizens have.
That all of the laws that Jebreal quotes have been argued over extensively by Israel’s legal system and the fact that an extensive network of non-governmental organizations advocate on behalf of Israel’s Arabs is a sign that civil rights in Israel are alive and well.
The New York Times has jumped on the opportunity to once again take Israel’s imperfections and magnify them to the extent of demonizing an entire country. Unfortunately this is what we have come to expect from the “paper of record.”
1b)
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
In addition, PA TV has presented Abbas himself as a central force promoting violence. A clip of Abbas calling to "use all ways" to prevent Jews from approaching the Temple Mount was aired 25 times in the last two weeks- a indication that the PA is promoting the ongoing riots and terror.
“The lawsuit is the equivalent of the lookout spotting the iceberg ahead of the Titanic,” state Del. Pat McDonough told the Tatler. He added that the group’s investigation found a voter fraud “smoking gun.”It is a federal crime to cast votes if you are not legally eligible to vote. Non-citizens, whether in the country legally or not, are prohibited from voting in most local and all state and federal elections. Yet the VVA investigation found that hundreds of non-citizens have been voting in Frederick County, Maryland. One in seven Maryland residents are non-U.S. citizens.
Undercover agents were able to vote as dead people, but election officials are attacking the agents.
1b)
Arab World’s Paradigm on Israel Has Shifted, but Obama’s Hasn’t
Finally, it was fascinating to attend a two day conference about the Middle East in times of upheaval in which Israel was mostly ignored, with the only frontal criticism of her policies delivered by an American diplomat.
And this explains a lot about the current U.S.-Israel spat. President Barack Obama entered office with the firm belief that the best way to improve America’s relations with the Muslim world was to create “daylight” between the U.S. and Israel, and for six years now, he and his staff have worked diligently to do exactly that. Nor was this an inherently unreasonable idea: Even a decade ago, Arab capitals might have cheered the sight of U.S. officials hurling childish insults at their Israeli counterparts.
The problem is that the Arab world has changed greatly in recent years, while the Obama administration–like most of Europe–remains stuck in its old paradigm. Granted, Arabs still don’t like Israel, but they have discovered that Israel and the Palestinians are very far down on their list of urgent concerns. The collapse of entire states that were formerly lynchpins of the Arab world, like Syria, Iraq, and Libya; the fear that other vital states like Egypt and Jordan could follow suit; the rise of Islamic extremist movements that threaten all the existing Arab states; the destabilizing flood of millions of refugees; the fear of U.S. disengagement from the region; the “predicament of living in the shadows of what they see as a belligerent Iran and an assertive Turkey” (to quote Melhem)–all these are far more pressing concerns.
And not only has Israel fallen off the list of pressing problems, but it has come to be viewed as capable of contributing, however modestly, to dealing with some of the new pressing problems. Last month, Robert Satloff of the Washington Institute published his impressions from a tour of the Mideast, including of Israel’s deepening strategic relationships with Egypt and Jordan. “Indeed, one of the most unusual moments of my trip was to hear certain Arab security officials effectively compete with one another for who has the better relationship with Israel,” he wrote. “In this regard, times have certainly changed.”
In fact, in this new Middle East, a U.S.-Israel spat probably generates more worry than glee in Arab capitals. Once, it was an Arab article of faith that America cared little about Arabs but greatly about Israel. Thus to the degree that Arab and Israeli concerns overlapped, as they do now on issues ranging from Iran to ISIS, America could be trusted to deal with the threat. Now, the Obama administration still appears to care little for Arab concerns; it seems hell-bent on striking a grand bargain with Iran and withdrawing from the Mideast. But the Arab world’s former ace in the hole to prevent such developments–Israel’s influence in Washington–suddenly looks more like deuce.
Yet all these shifting winds seem to have blown right by the Obama administration: It still acts as if America’s position in the Muslim world depends on showing that it hates Israel, too. And thus you reach the farce of a two-day conference in Abu Dhabi where “the only frontal criticism” of Israel’s policies was “delivered by an American diplomat.”
When it comes to Israel, the Arab world has moved on. But the Obama administration remains stuck in the last century.
1c)Fatah calls for "day of rage" tomorrow
by Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik
Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah organization has declared tomorrow Friday a "day of rage" and called on the Palestinian "fighters" to defend Al-Aqsa. Palestinian rioters and terrorists have been active in recent weeks in the Jerusalem area, killing two, injuring many others, and causing millions of dollars in damage.
The following is the announcement by Fatah that was reported by the official PA news agency:
"Fatah calls to its fighters and to the masses of the Palestinian people to aid the Al-Aqsa Mosque and occupied Jerusalem.
In an announcement that was published by the Fatah Mobilization and Organization Commission today, the movement called to set tomorrow as a day of rage throughout the homeland and in countries which are home to refugees, to express the Palestinian people's opposition to any attack on the holy places and foremost among them the Al-Aqsa Mosque... And to consider desecration of Al-Aqsa as a declaration of a religious war against the Palestinian people and the Arab Islamic nations."
[WAFA, official PA news agency, Oct 30, 2014]
1d) Fatah: "Celebrations throughout Old City of Jerusalem" after attempted murder
of "despicable" Rabbi Yehuda Glick
Advisor to PA Chairman Abbas on terrorist:
"The heroic Martyr (Shahid)...
who carried out the assassination attempt
of Zionist rabbi Yehuda Glick"
by Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik
Fatah celebrated the attempted murder of Rabbi Yehuda Glick, yesterday in Jerusalem, and glorified the shooter. Rabbi Yehuda Glick is the Chairman of the Temple Mount Heritage Foundation that works through educational activities to increase awareness of the central place the Temple Mount in Jewish heritage and works to promote civil rights for Jews to pray on the Temple Mount.
Fatah referred to him as an "extremist Zionist," called the attempt on his life "the assassination of the despicable Glick," and honored the terrorist who was subsequently killed by Israel as a "heroic Martyr."
PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas' advisor on NGOs and Fatah Central Committee member Sultan Abu Al-Einein shared a poster published by Fatah's Jerusalembranch praising the terrorist and referring to him as the "heroic Martyr" on the way "to his wedding":
"Fatah's Jerusalem branch accompanies its heroic Martyr to his wedding,Mutaz Ibrahim Khalil Hijazi, who carried out the assassination attempt of Zionist rabbi Yehuda Glick."
Last week "Palestinian Media Watch" documented that this same advisor toAbbas glorified a terrorist who murdered a three-month-old baby.
The Fatah poster honoring the terrorist shows his picture with Jerusalem in the background.
The following is the image published on Fatah's Facebook page, "Fatah - The Main Page," followed by the text:
Text:
"The heroic Martyr (Shahid) Mutaz Hijazi who carried out the assassination of the despicable [rabbi Yehuda] Glick. Praise and eternity to the Martyrs..."
Text on the Poster:
"The Palestinian National Liberation Movement - Fatah announces the death of
its heroic Martyr, 'the Martyr of Jerusalem'
Mutaz Ibrahim Khalil Hijazi
who carried out the assassination of Rabbi Yehuda Glick
and who rose to Heaven on Thursday, August 30, 2014,
after a gunfight with the forces of the Zionist occupation in Jerusalem"
[Facebook, "Fatah - The Main Page", Oct. 30, 2014]
Another Fatah Facebook Text:
"Celebrations throughout the Old City of Jerusalem - the attempted assassination of the extremist Zionist Yehuda Glick, who engineered the invasions of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and heads the council of the 'Temple Mount' Faithful, with three bullets as he was leaving a conference of the alleged 'Temple' [Mount] Faithful"
[Facebook, "Fatah - The Main Page", Oct. 29, 2014]
The following are the image and text posted on the Fatah's Facebook page, and re-posted by Abbas' advisor Sultan Abu Al-Einein:
Text:
"Martyr (Shahid) Mutaz Hijazi,the Martyr of Dawn in Jerusalem, is a released prisoner. He died as a Martyr (Shahid) following a gunfight. The occupation forces accuse him of attempting to assassinate the Zionist rabbi Yehuda Glick."
Text on poster shared by Abbas' advisor, Abu Al-Einein:
"'Among the believers are men true to what they promised Allah. Among them is he who has fulfilled his vow [to the death], and among them is he who awaits [his chance]. And they did not alter [the terms of their commitment] by any alteration.' (Surah 33:23, trans. Sahih International)
With great honor and pride
The Palestinian National Liberation Movement - Fatah, Jerusalem branch accompanies its heroic Martyr to his wedding
Mutaz Ibrahim Khalil Hijazi,
who carried out the assassination attempt of Zionist rabbi Yehuda Glick
Who has ascended to Heaven today, Thursday, October 30, 2014
after a gunfight with occupation soldiers in Jerusalem
May he rest in peace
[Facebook page of Fatah Central Committee member Sultan Abu Al-Einein, Oct. 30, 2014]
Note:
On Oct. 29, 2014, Mutaz Hijazi, an Islamic Jihad member and released prisoner, attempted to murder Rabbi Yehuda Glick, who was seriously wounded in the shooting attack.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2)-
Massive Non-Citizen Voting Uncovered in Maryland
By Bryan Preston
An election integrity watchdog group is suing the state of Maryland, alleging that it has discovered massive and ongoing fraudulent voting by non-U.S. citizens in one county. But because of the way that the non-citizens are able to cast votes in elections, the fraud is likely happening in every single county and subdivision across the state. The group believes that the illegal voting has been happening for years.
The group, Virginia Voters Alliance, says that it compared how voters in Frederick County filled out jury duty statements compared with their voting records. The group’s investigation found that thousands of people in Frederick County who stated that they are not U.S. citizens on jury duty forms went on to cast votes in elections. Either they failed to tell the truth when they were summoned for jury duty, or they cast illegal votes. Both are crimes. The same group previously found that about 40,000 people are registered to vote in both Virginia and Maryland.
“The lawsuit is the equivalent of the lookout spotting the iceberg ahead of the Titanic,” state Del. Pat McDonough told the Tatler. He added that the group’s investigation found a voter fraud “smoking gun.”It is a federal crime to cast votes if you are not legally eligible to vote. Non-citizens, whether in the country legally or not, are prohibited from voting in most local and all state and federal elections. Yet the VVA investigation found that hundreds of non-citizens have been voting in Frederick County, Maryland. One in seven Maryland residents are non-U.S. citizens.
Maryland state law makes it easier for non-citizens, both those present legally and those in the country against the law, to vote. Maryland issues drivers licenses to legal and illegal aliens. Driver’s licenses in turn make it easier under the Motor Voter law to register to vote. Maryland also offers copious taxpayer-funded social programs to non-citizens in the state.
The group filed suit in Baltimore’s U.S. District Court on Friday. They are suing the Frederick County Board of Elections and the Maryland State Board of Elections.
Del. Pat McDonough (R-Baltimore and Harford Counties) detailed the alleged fraud in a Maryland press conference today. He is calling for a special state prosecutor because the fraud may be taking place statewide, with significant impact on Maryland elections. Maryland currently holds 10 electoral votes in presidential elections. McDonough is also proposing legislation including voter ID to close the loopholes that he says non-citizens are using to cast votes.
Liberals who oppose efforts to prevent voter fraud claim that there is no fraud — or at least not any that involves voting in person at the polls.
But New York City’s watchdog Department of Investigations has just provided the latest evidence of how easy it is to commit voter fraud that is almost undetectable. DOI undercover agents showed up at 63 polling places last fall and pretended to be voters who should have been turned away by election officials; the agents assumed the names of individuals who had died or moved out of town, or who were sitting in jail. In 61 instances, or 97 percent of the time, the testers were allowed to vote. Those who did vote cast only a write-in vote for a “John Test” so as to not affect the outcome of any contest. DOI published its findings two weeks ago in a searing 70-page report accusing the city’s Board of Elections of incompetence, waste, nepotism, and lax procedures.
The Board of Elections, which has a $750 million annual budget and a work force of 350 people, reacted in classic bureaucratic fashion, which prompted one city paper to deride it as “a 21st-century survivor of Boss Tweed–style politics.” The Board approved a resolution referring the DOI’s investigators for prosecution. It also asked the state’s attorney general to determine whether DOI had violated the civil rights of voters who had moved or are felons, and it sent a letter of complaint to Mayor Bill de Blasio. Normally, I wouldn’t think de Blasio would give the BOE the time of day, but New York’s new mayor has long been a close ally of former leaders of ACORN, the now-disgraced “community organizing” group that saw its employees convicted of voter-registration fraud all over the country during and after the 2008 election.
Greg Soumas, president of New York’s BOE, offered a justification for calling in the prosecutors: “If something was done in an untoward fashion, it was only done by DOI. We [are] unaware of any color of authority on the part of [DOI] to vote in the identity of any person other than themselves — and our reading of the election law is that such an act constitutes a felony.” The Board is bipartisan, and all but two of its members voted with Soumas. The sole exceptions were Democrat Jose Araujo, who abstained because the DOI report implicated him in hiring his wife and sister-and-law for Board jobs, and Republican Simon Shamoun.
Good-government groups are gobsmacked at Soumas’s refusal to smell the stench of corruption in his patronage-riddled empire. “They should focus not on assigning blame to others, but on taking responsibility for solving the problems themselves,” Dick Dadey of the watchdog group Citizens Union told the Daily News. “It’s a case of the Board of Elections passing the buck.” DOI officials respond that the use of undercover agents is routine in anti-corruption probes and that people should carefully read the 70-page report they’ve filed before criticizing it. They are surprised how little media attention their report has received.
You’d think more media outlets would have been interested, because the sloppiness revealed in the DOI report is mind-boggling. Young undercover agents were able to vote using the names of people three times their age, people who in fact were dead. In one example, a 24-year female agent gave the name of someone who had died in 2012 at age 87; the workers at the Manhattan polling site gave her a ballot, no questions asked. Even the two cases where poll workers turned away an investigator raise eyebrows. In the first case, a poll worker on Staten Island walked outside with the undercover investigator who had just been refused a ballot; the “voter” was advised to go to the polling place near where he used to live and “play dumb” in order to vote. In the second case, the investigator was stopped from voting only because the felon whose name he was using was the son of the election official at the polling place.
Shooting the messenger has been a typical reaction in other states when people have demonstrated just how easy it is to commit voter fraud. Guerrilla videographer James O’Keefe had three of his assistants visit precincts during New Hampshire’s January 2012 presidential primary. They asked poll workers whether their books listed the names of several voters, all deceased individuals still listed on voter-registration rolls. Poll workers handed out ten ballots, never once asking for a photo ID. O’Keefe’s team immediately gave back the ballots, unmarked, to precinct workers. Debbie Lane, a ballot inspector at one of the Manchester polling sites, later said: “I wasn’t sure what I was allowed to do. . . . I can’t tell someone not to vote, I suppose.” The only precinct in which O’Keefe or his crew did not obtain a ballot was one in which the local precinct officer had personally known the dead “voter.”
Liberals who oppose ballot-security measures claim that there are few prosecutions for voter fraud, which they take to mean that fraud doesn’t happen. But as the New York DOI report demonstrates, it is comically easy, given the sloppy-voter registration records often kept in America, to commit voter fraud in person. (A 2012 study by the Pew Research Center found that nationwide, at least 1.8 million deceased voters are still registered to vote.) And unless someone confesses, in-person voter fraud is very difficult to detect — or stop. New York’s Gothamist news service reported last September that four poll workers in Brooklyn reported they believed people were trying to vote in the name of other registered voters. Police officers observed the problems but did nothing because voter fraud isn’t under the police department’s purview.
But New York City’s watchdog Department of Investigations has just provided the latest evidence of how easy it is to commit voter fraud that is almost undetectable. DOI undercover agents showed up at 63 polling places last fall and pretended to be voters who should have been turned away by election officials; the agents assumed the names of individuals who had died or moved out of town, or who were sitting in jail. In 61 instances, or 97 percent of the time, the testers were allowed to vote. Those who did vote cast only a write-in vote for a “John Test” so as to not affect the outcome of any contest. DOI published its findings two weeks ago in a searing 70-page report accusing the city’s Board of Elections of incompetence, waste, nepotism, and lax procedures.
The Board of Elections, which has a $750 million annual budget and a work force of 350 people, reacted in classic bureaucratic fashion, which prompted one city paper to deride it as “a 21st-century survivor of Boss Tweed–style politics.” The Board approved a resolution referring the DOI’s investigators for prosecution. It also asked the state’s attorney general to determine whether DOI had violated the civil rights of voters who had moved or are felons, and it sent a letter of complaint to Mayor Bill de Blasio. Normally, I wouldn’t think de Blasio would give the BOE the time of day, but New York’s new mayor has long been a close ally of former leaders of ACORN, the now-disgraced “community organizing” group that saw its employees convicted of voter-registration fraud all over the country during and after the 2008 election.
nt
Good-government groups are gobsmacked at Soumas’s refusal to smell the stench of corruption in his patronage-riddled empire. “They should focus not on assigning blame to others, but on taking responsibility for solving the problems themselves,” Dick Dadey of the watchdog group Citizens Union told the Daily News. “It’s a case of the Board of Elections passing the buck.” DOI officials respond that the use of undercover agents is routine in anti-corruption probes and that people should carefully read the 70-page report they’ve filed before criticizing it. They are surprised how little media attention their report has received.
You’d think more media outlets would have been interested, because the sloppiness revealed in the DOI report is mind-boggling. Young undercover agents were able to vote using the names of people three times their age, people who in fact were dead. In one example, a 24-year female agent gave the name of someone who had died in 2012 at age 87; the workers at the Manhattan polling site gave her a ballot, no questions asked. Even the two cases where poll workers turned away an investigator raise eyebrows. In the first case, a poll worker on Staten Island walked outside with the undercover investigator who had just been refused a ballot; the “voter” was advised to go to the polling place near where he used to live and “play dumb” in order to vote. In the second case, the investigator was stopped from voting only because the felon whose name he was using was the son of the election official at the polling place.
Shooting the messenger has been a typical reaction in other states when people have demonstrated just how easy it is to commit voter fraud. Guerrilla videographer James O’Keefe had three of his assistants visit precincts during New Hampshire’s January 2012 presidential primary. They asked poll workers whether their books listed the names of several voters, all deceased individuals still listed on voter-registration rolls. Poll workers handed out ten ballots, never once asking for a photo ID. O’Keefe’s team immediately gave back the ballots, unmarked, to precinct workers. Debbie Lane, a ballot inspector at one of the Manchester polling sites, later said: “I wasn’t sure what I was allowed to do. . . . I can’t tell someone not to vote, I suppose.” The only precinct in which O’Keefe or his crew did not obtain a ballot was one in which the local precinct officer had personally known the dead “voter.”
New Hampshire’s Democratic governor, John Lynch, sputtered when asked about O’Keefe’s video, and he condemned the effort to test the election system even though no actual votes were cast. “They should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, if in fact they’re found guilty of some criminal act,” he roared. But cooler heads eventually prevailed, and the GOP state legislature later approved a voter-ID bill, with enough votes to override the governor’s veto. Despite an exhaustive and intrusive investigation, no charges were ever filed against any of O’Keefe’s associates.
Later in 2012, in Washington, D.C., one of O’Keefe’s assistants was able to obtain Attorney General Eric Holder’s ballot even though Holder is 62 years old and bears no resemblance to the 22-year-old white man who obtained it merely by asking if Eric Holder was on the rolls. But the Department of Justice, which is currently suing Texas to block that state’s photo-ID law, dismissed the Holder ballot incident as “manufactured.” The irony was lost on the DOJ that Holder, a staunch opponent of voter-ID laws, could have himself been disenfranchised by a white man because Washington, D.C., has no voter-ID law. Polls consistently show that more than 70 percent of Americans — including clear majorities of African Americans and Hispanics — support such laws.
Liberals who oppose ballot-security measures claim that there are few prosecutions for voter fraud, which they take to mean that fraud doesn’t happen. But as the New York DOI report demonstrates, it is comically easy, given the sloppy-voter registration records often kept in America, to commit voter fraud in person. (A 2012 study by the Pew Research Center found that nationwide, at least 1.8 million deceased voters are still registered to vote.) And unless someone confesses, in-person voter fraud is very difficult to detect — or stop. New York’s Gothamist news service reported last September that four poll workers in Brooklyn reported they believed people were trying to vote in the name of other registered voters. Police officers observed the problems but did nothing because voter fraud isn’t under the police department’s purview.
What the DOI investigators were able to do was eerily similar to actual fraud that has occurred in New York before. In 1984, Brooklyn’s Democratic district attorney, Elizabeth Holtzman, released a state grand-jury report on a successful 14-year conspiracy that cast thousands of fraudulent votes in local, state, and congressional elections. Just like the DOI undercover operatives, the conspirators cast votes at precincts in the names of dead, moved, and bogus voters. The grand jury recommended voter ID, a basic election-integrity measure that New York has steadfastly refused to implement.
In states where non-photo ID is required, it’s also all too easy to manufacture records that allow people to vote. In 2012, the son of Congressman Jim Moran, the Democrat who represents Virginia’s Washington suburbs, had to resign as field director for his father’s campaign after it became clear that he had encouraged voter fraud. Patrick Moran was caught advising an O’Keefe videographer on how to commit in-person voter fraud. The scheme involved using a personal computer to forge utility bills that would satisfy Virginia’s voter-ID law and then relying on the assistance of Democratic lawyers stationed at the polls to make sure the fraudulent votes were counted. Last year, Virginia tightened its voter-ID law and ruled that showing a utility bill was no longer sufficient to obtain a ballot.
Given that someone who is dead, is in jail, or has moved isn’t likely to complain if someone votes in his name, how do we know that voter fraud at the polls isn’t a problem? An ounce of prevention — in the form of voter ID and better training of poll workers — should be among the minimum precautions taken to prevent an electoral miscarriage or meltdown in a close race.
After all, even a small number of votes can have sweeping consequences. Al Franken’s 312-vote victory in 2008 over Minnesota senator Norm Coleman gave Democrats a filibuster-proof Senate majority of 60 votes, which allowed them to pass Obamacare. Months after the Obamacare vote, a conservative group called Minnesota Majority finished comparing criminal records with voting rolls and identified 1,099 felons — all ineligible to vote — who had voted in the Franken–Coleman race. Fox News random interviews with ten of those felons found that nine had voted for Franken, backing up national academic studies that show felons tend to vote strongly for Democrats.
Minnesota Majority took its findings to prosecutors across the state, but very few showed any interest in pursuing the issue. Some did, though, and 177 people have been convicted as of mid 2012 — not just “accused” but actually convicted — of voting fraudulently in the Senate race. Probably the only reason the number of convictions isn’t higher is that the standard for convicting someone of voter fraud in Minnesota is that the person must have been both ineligible and must have “knowingly” voted unlawfully. Anyone accused of fraud is apt to get off by claiming he didn’t know he’d done anything wrong.
Given that we now know for certain how easy it is to commit undetectable voter fraud and how serious the consequences can be, it’s truly bizarre to have officials at the New York City Board of Elections and elsewhere savage those who shine a light on the fact that their modus operandi invites fraud. One might even think that they’re covering up their incompetence or that they don’t want to pay attention to what crimes could be occurring behind the curtains at their polling places. Or both.
John Fund is a national-affairs columnist for National Review Online. Along with Hans von Spakovsky, he is the author of Who’s Counting: How Fraudsters and Bureaucrats Put Your Vote at Risk.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
No comments:
Post a Comment