Democrats Are Smart and Have Good Solutions To The Misery They Have Caused! Yes American Elections Are Tarnished!

DOJ refuses to investigate link of supporters and
donors to Clinton Foundation while Hillary Sec.
of State.

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Click here: IMG_3824.MP4 - Google Drive

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The press and media have a public responsibility and are protected accordingly. They are free to choose and go in one of two directions.  They can be responsible and inform or they can distort, defame and seek to defeat candidates they do not favor.

The press and media are biased, basically liberal and by their evident denigration of Trump's comments about the second Amendment demonstrate they have chosen and are prepared to distort in order to defeat Trump.

The press and media also demonstrate their bias by giving little or no coverage to news harmful to Hillary and devoting far more time to news that is Trump negative.

In choosing to perform as they are and have been for decades they have abrogated their responsibility to be objective and to report in an unbiased manner.

When the press and media oppose and or distort whatever Trump says and then question his soundness  and disregard what Hillary says and her personal record this places roadblocks which are extremely difficult to overcome. It taints voter perceptions.

That said, should Trump lose the election it will not be because of press and media bias,  There are far more significant reasons such as: his own manner of campaigning and choice of words, the potential bias of the electoral college which favors liberals, the difference in money and ground game favoring Hillary, the growing influence of the Hispanic vote and Trump'slack of support within his own party.

Larry Sabato is one of the best election prognosticators and, at the present time, he believes Trump could win the actual popular vote but lose the electoral college and thus, the election.

By every logical analysis Hillary should be losing because of her unfavorable ratings and lack of credibility but against Trump she is winning and could also make inroads in Congressional seats.

In my opinion, the election will be determined by the the first debate and until it occurs I believe everything else we hear maybe meaningful in pointing us in the right direction but not determinate.

Stay tuned.
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Valid and encouraging reasons to vote Democrat and for Hillary.  (See 1 below.)
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Recently a U.N contractor has been accused of illegally funneling charitable money to Hamas. (See 2 and 2a below.)
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I have been told by a very dear friend, whose opinion I truly respect, and a long time fellow memo reader that I should not post the below type articles etc. because it is a blight on what he, otherwise, considers  is a meaningful memo.

I discussed this with Donald  and he said: " aw go ahead."

What difference does it make now, they are all dead!

THE CLINTON DEAD POOL

1- James McDougal � Clintons convicted Whitewater partner died of an apparent heart attack, while in solitary confinement. He was a key witness in Ken Starr�s investigation.

2 � Mary Mahoney � A former White House intern was murdered July 1997 at a Starbucks Coffee Shop in Georgetown .. The murder happened just after she was to go public with her story of sexual harassment in the White House.

3 � Vince Foster � Former White House counselor, and colleague of Hillary Clinton at Little Rock�s Rose Law firm. Died of a gunshot wound to the head, ruled a suicide.

4 � Ron Brown � Secretary of Commerce and former DNC Chairman. Reported to have died by impact in a plane crash. A pathologist close to the investigation reported that there was a hole in the top of Brown�s skull resembling a gunshot wound. At the time of his death Brown was being investigated, and spoke publicly of his willingness to cut a deal with prosecutors. The rest of the people on the plane also died. A few days later the Air Traffic controller committed suicide.

5 � C. Victor Raiser, II � Raiser, a major player in the Clinton fund raising organization died in a private plane crash in July 1992.

6 � Paul Tulley � Democratic National Committee Political Director found dead in a hotel room in Little Rock , September 1992. Described by Clinton as a �dear friend and trusted advisor�.

7 � Ed Willey � Clinton fundraiser, found dead November 1993 deep in the woods in VA of a gunshot wound to the head. Ruled a suicide. Ed Willey died on the same day his wife Kathleen Willey claimed Bill Clinton groped her in the oval office in the White House. Ed Willey was involved in several Clinton fund raising events.

8 � Jerry Parks � Head of Clinton�s gubernatorial security team in Little Rock .. Gunned down in his car at a deserted intersection outside Little Rock Park�s son said his father was building a dossier on Clinton He allegedly threatened to reveal this information. After he died the files were mysteriously removed from his house.

9 � James Bunch � Died from a gunshot suicide. It was reported that he had a �Black Book� of people which contained names of influential people who visited prostitutes in Texas and Arkansas

10 � James Wilson � Was found dead in May 1993 from an apparent hanging suicide. He was reported to have ties to Whitewater..

11 � Kathy Ferguson � Ex-wife of Arkansas Trooper Danny Ferguson, was found dead in May 1994, in her living room with a gunshot to her head. It was ruled a suicide even though there were several packed suitcases, as if she were going somewhere. Danny Ferguson was a co-defendant along with Bill Clinton in the Paula Jones lawsuit Kathy Ferguson was a possible corroborating witness for Paula Jones.

12 � Bill Shelton � Arkansas State Trooper and fiancee of Kathy Ferguson. Critical of the suicide ruling of his fiancee, he was found dead in June, 1994 of a gunshot wound also ruled a suicide at the grave site of his fiancee.

13 � Gandy Baugh � Attorney for Clinton�s friend Dan Lassater, died by jumping out a window of a tall building January, 1994. His client was a convicted drug distributor.

14 � Florence Martin � Accountant & sub-contractor for the CIA, was related to the Barry Seal, Mena, Arkansas, airport drug smuggling case. He died of three gunshot wounds.

15 � Suzanne Coleman � Reportedly had an affair with Clinton when he was Arkansas Attorney General. Died of a gunshot wound to the back of the head, ruled a suicide. Was pregnant at the time of her death.

16 � Paula Grober � Clinton�s speech interpreter for the deaf from 1978 until her death December 9, 1992. She died in a one car accident.

17 � Danny Casolaro - Investigative reporter, investigating Mena Airport and Arkansas Development Finance Authority. He slit his wrists, apparently, in the middle of his investigation.

18 � Paul Wilcher - Attorney investigating corruption at Mena Airport with Casolaro and the 1980 �October Surprise� was found dead on a toilet June 22, 1993, in his Washington DC apartment had delivered a report to Janet Reno 3 weeks before his death.

19 � Jon Parnell Walker � Whitewater investigator for Resolution Trust Corp. Jumped to his death from his Arlington,Virginia apartment balcony August 15, 1993. He was investigating the Morgan Guaranty scandal.

20 � Barbara Wise � Commerce Department staffer. Worked closely with Ron Brown and John Huang. Cause of death: Unknown. Died November 29, 1996. Her bruised, naked body was found locked in her office at the Department of Commerce.

21 � Charles Meissner � Assistant Secretary of Commerce who gave John Huang special security clearance, died shortly thereafter in a small plane crash.

22 � Dr. Stanley Heard � Chairman of the National Chiropractic Health Care Advisory Committee died with his attorney Steve Dickson in a small plane crash. Dr. Heard, in addition to serving on Clinton �s advisory council personally treated Clinton�s mother, stepfather and brother.

23 � Barry Seal � Drug running TWA pilot out of Mena Arkansas, death was no accident.

24 � Johnny Lawhorn, Jr. � Mechanic, found a check made out to Bill Clinton in the trunk of a car left at his repair shop. He was found dead after his car had hit a utility pole.

25 � Stanley Huggins � Investigated Madison Guaranty. His death was a purported suicide and his report was never released.

26 � Hershell Friday � Attorney and Clinton fundraiser died March 1, 1994, when his plane exploded.

27 � Kevin Ives & Don Henry � Known as �The boys on the track� case. Reports say the boys may have stumbled upon the Mena Arkansas airport drug operation. A controversial case, the initial report of death said, due to falling asleep on railroad tracks. Later reports claim the 2 boys had been slain before being placed on the tracks. Many linked to the case died before their testimony could come before a Grand Jury.

THE FOLLOWING PERSONS HAD INFORMATION ON THE IVES/HENRY CASE:

28 � Keith Coney � Died when his motorcycle slammed into the back of a truck, 7/88.

29 � Keith McMaskle � Died, stabbed 113 times, Nov, 1988

30 � Gregory Collins � Died from a gunshot wound January 1989.

31 � Jeff Rhodes � He was shot, mutilated and found burned in a trash dump in April 1989.

32 � James Milan � Found decapitated. However, the Coroner ruled his death was due to natural causes�.

34 � Richard Winters � A suspect in the Ives/Henry deaths. He was killed in a set-up robbery July 1989.

THE FOLLOWING CLINTON BODYGUARDS ARE ALSO DEAD

35 � Major William S. Barkley, Jr.

36 � Captain Scott J . Reynolds

37 � Sgt. Brian Hanley

38 � Sgt. Tim Sabel

39 � Major General William Robertson

40 � Col. William Densberger

41 � Col. Robert Kelly

42 � Spec. Gary Rhodes

43 � Steve Willis

44 � Robert Williams

45 � Conway LeBleu

46 � Todd McKeehan

Not Included in this list are the 4 men killed in Benghazi.

This ISN'T about politics or party preferences; I'm not crazy about Donald Trump but he does not have a long list of known associates that have ended up dead in suspicious circumstances. Nor has he been caught LYING TO CONGRESS. Is  America being betrayed? Are we set on a course toward the dissolution of our nation and the true freedoms which so many have fought and died to protect? 

How you vote may reveal the way you decided.  (See 3 below.)
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I was listening to several interviews of pro Clinton representatives. They made it evident the Clinton Campaign has united in their debunking of Trump. Personal attacks are an old tactic used by Democrats because it sets up the basis for disparaging anything they subsequently say like Trumps' comment about our election process being infected.

When I had John Fund speak here several years ago he talked about the voter fraud problem that he and his associate, Hans von Spakovsky,  have written about and now the head of Judicial Watch is about to release a book which validates what Fund and Trump have averred. (See 4 and 4a below.)

Furthermore,  Judicial Watch just released information about the possibility that, while Sec.of State, a host of Clinton supporters were given preference with respect to jobs, special favors etc. while simultaneously making significant contributions to The Clinton Foundation. When reporters confronted a spokesman for The State Department, she responded she could not enlighten the American people. Even the name of a favor seeker had been redacted.

Then, later today we were told statistics pertaining to our fight with Islamist terrorists had been favorably massaged. This was revealed to a Congressional Committee by a whistle blower.
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Dick
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I vote Democrat because I love the fact I can now marry whomever I want. I've decided to marry my German Shepherd.

 I vote Democrat because America's military are a threat to world peace.

I vote Democrat because I believe government will do a better job of spending the money I earn than I would.

I vote Democrat because they promise to govern openly ( that means in a transparent manner) and take care of and be fair to everyone who gives them money.

 I vote Democrat because Freedom of Speech is fine as long as it offends no one.

I vote Democrat because they know how to increase our debt faster than Republicans and Democrats believe the more we owe the better off we are.

I vote Democrat because they  are the Godless Party and believe religion is old fashioned.

I vote Democrat because I'm way too irresponsible to own a gun. My local police are all I need to protect me from murderers and thieves. I am also thankful we have a 911 service that gets police to your residence in order to identify your body after a home invasion.

I vote Democrat because I'm not concerned about millions of aborted babies so long as we keep all death row inmates alive and comfy.

I vote Democrat because I think illegal immigrants have a right to free health care, education, and Social Security benefits. 

I vote Democrat because I believe businesses should not be allowed to make large profits . They need to make a little and allow Democrats to redistribute the rest as they see fit. 

I vote Democrat because I believe liberal judges need to rewrite the Constitution every few days to suit fringe kooks who would never get their agendas past voters.

I vote Democrat because I think it's better to pay $billions for oil to people who hate us, but not drill our own because it might cause more climate change and upset Greens.

I vote Democrat because when you cannot name the enemy they might not exist.

I vote Democrat because they give away things and we all know when government spends our money there is no cost.

I vote Democrat because they know best how to run public education.

I vote Democrat because I believe oil company profits of 4% on a gallon of gas are obscene, but the government taxing the same gallon at 15% isn't.

I vote Democrat because they love and protect the underdog and now we have more underdogs than ever because Obama has brought about so much positive change.

I vote Democrat because they have brought peace to peoples living in The Middle East.

I vote Democrat because Obama cannot run for a third term and Hillary will give me more of the same.

I vote Democrat because I fear the police and prefer my neighborhood be protected by street gangs.

Finally, I vote Democrat because they are so smart and have so many good solutions to the misery they have caused.

"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits"... Albert Einstein
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2) HOW YOUR TAX DOLLARS ARE FUNDING HAMAS' NEXT TERROR WAR
By Benny Avni

What to do about Gaza?

Global do-gooders galore operate in the Hamas-ruled strip on Israel’s border, moved by the much publicized, but genuine, plight of its population. Yet Hamas does everything it can to turn ploughshares into swords.

As Israel has been proving this week by exposing illicit activities in an alphabet soup of international humanitarian bodies active in Gaza, many of them lavishly funded by American taxpayers.

On Tuesday, Israeli police announced the arrest of Waheed al-Bursh, a contractor for the United Nations Development Program and, according to Israel, a Hamas operative as well. Bursh was one of those lucky Gazans hired by the UN agency after the 2014 war. His task: demolish bomb-damaged houses and remove the rubble.

According to Israeli authorities, whenever munitions, arms or war tunnels were found in the rubble, Bursh let Hamas handle them rather than notify the United Nations, as his contract requires. He also used UNDP resources to help Hamas construct a naval base in northern Gaza.

Last week, Israel announced the arrest of Mohammad el-Halabi, the manager of Gaza operations of World Vision, a Christian charity operating in 100 countries around the world. According to Israeli authorities, Halabi funneled $50 million of World Vision funds to Hamas.

Israeli officials have indicated this is only the tip of the iceberg. During the investigation of Bursh, they say, they turned up other operatives of international organizations moonlighting for Hamas.

And remember, it was Hamas rocket attacks on Israeli towns that have led to these rounds of war with Israel. Aid meant to ease pain in the aftermath of such wars shouldn’t end up helping Hamas wage the next round.

Better throw your good money in the trash can.

And yes, we’re talking about good money. In 2014, the US government funded World Vision to the tune of nearly $200 million. That same year, the UNDP received nearly a half-billion dollars from American taxpayers. (And agency chief Helen Clark has been trying to garner United States support in her campaign to become the next UN secretary general.)

So it’s time to stop financing every new round of Hamas’ war on Israel.

Yet the most we’ve done so far is tut-tutting. The State Department is “following the Israeli investigation closely,” spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau said Monday, adding, “If confirmed, Hamas’ embezzlement of humanitarian assistance funds [intended for] some of the most vulnerable people would be reprehensible.”

While America is following, Australia is acting. Last week Canberra announced a suspension of all government aid to World Vision until the Israeli legal process is completed. The United States didn’t. It sounded like the United Nations, instead.

Israel has recently sped up the transfer of humanitarian goods to Gaza, according to a July report sponsored by the United Nations, the European Union, Russia and the United States. It clearly realizes that easing the dire needs of the strip’s 1.3 million people is to its advantage.

Yet Israel can’t compromise on its own security and allow the exploitation of world sympathy and taxpayer dollars to bolster the military capabilities of an organization sworn to annihilate the Jewish state.

So Israel is caught between a rock and a hard place. Hamas has complete control over goings-on inside Gaza.

Israel left the strip a decade ago (even as it’s still accused of being its “occupier”). Now all Israel can do is expose abuse when it finds it.

We can help by withholding funds from international aid groups facilitating such abuse, making sure that our money goes to helping Gazans in need, rather than terrorists

2a)

UN SPECIAL ENVOY CALLS ON IMMEDIATE HALT OF ALL AID MONEY INTO THE GAZA STRIP

New York, (8/10/2016) - United Nations Special Envoy Laurie Cardoza-Moore has called on all international humanitarian organizations to immediately halt all aid money to Gaza until it can be proven that the money isn't being squandered by Hamas. Her position comes hours after a UN employee in Gaza was indicted for funneling charity donations to fund Hamas naval units and days after a representative of the Evangelical World Vision organization was accused of funneling up to $50M in charitable donations to the Islamist terror group. Cardoza-Moore who represents the World Council of Independent Christian Churches (WCICC) at the United Nations and is President of the Evangelical Christian organization "Proclaiming Justice to the Nations" (PJTN) stated: "The enemy of the people of Gaza is Hamas, not Israel. Hamas has hijacked the coastal strip and rules over its people with an iron fist. For decades, the leadership of Hamas has robbed its people of aid money. The time has come to halt all aid money into the Gaza Strip as long as Hamas is in control." She continued: "If the international community wants to help the impoverished people of Gaza, they must work to free them from Hamas. It is unacceptable that hundreds of millions of dollars are likely being directly transferred to the coffers of an international terrorist organization in the name of Christianity and humanity. No Church or humanitarian organization should send a single cent to Gaza as long as it is run by a band of murderous terrorist bandits".  Cardoza-Moore contacted World Vision last week to clarify how an Evangelical Christian organization could hire a Hamas terrorist sympathizer to distribute aid money -to date she has not received a response. In addition she has lodged a formal complaint with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and demanded that they immediately stop distributing aid to Gaza.

kit-padding-start: 0px; color: #666666; text-align: left;">

Proclaiming Justice to the Nations (PJTN), a non-profit organization, was established to educate Christians about their Biblical responsibility to stand with their Jewish brethren and Israel. The organization utilizes the power of film, grassroots events, and speaking engagements to facilitate dialogue between the Christian and Jewish communities in support of the State of Israel and against global genocidal anti-Semitism.

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3) Report: DOJ Rebuffed FBI-Requested Investigation of Clinton Foundation
By Guy Benson

Before proceeding further, go read Cortney and Ed Morrissey's summaries of the latest sketchy developments surrounding the Clinton Foundation.  In short, newly-released emails reveal more evidence of influence-peddling within Hillary Clinton's State Department vis-a-vis major donors to her family "slush fund." Senior officials at the foundation were in contact with top Hillary aides seeking favors and special connections on behalf of major-dollar contributors, including a Lebanese-Nigerian billionaire who donated between one and five million dollars to the Clinton Foundation. Secretary Clinton also went to bat for a foreign banker in her official capacity, eventually leading to quite a payday for her husband and their foundation.  Coupled with additional serious improprieties, a chronic lack of required transparency, and sundry instances of apparent corruption, these new revelations help cement a wider pattern of grift and sleaze.  Which brings us to this nugget buried deep within an online CNN report:

Wait, what?  First of all, this should be the headline, not an afterthought in the 20th paragraph of the story.  Secondly, those last two sentences raise obvious questions: What prompted the FBI's request for a Clinton Foundation probe?  And why would DOJ officials rebuff the FBI based on old information?  Haven't we learned more and more information about the foundation and its seedy inner-workings over the past year, as the parallel email scandal has unfolded?  I'm suddenly reminded of this exchange from last month's Comey hearings:

CHAFFETZ: Did you look at the Clinton Foundation?

COMEY: I'm not going to comment on the existence or non-existence of any other investigations.

CHAFFETZ: Was the Clinton Foundation tied into this investigation?

COMEY: I'm not going to answer that.

Hmm.  We need more answers on this, as soon as possible.  By the way, the latest foundation-related reports linked above are all derived from emails produced by Hillary's top aides, but not her own correspondence. Those haven't been released, raising strenuous and legitimate hackles from Republicans:

Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Reince Priebus is calling on the State Department to release recently found emails from Hillary Clinton’s tenure before the November elections. “With growing evidence of pay-to-play relationships between Clinton’s State Department and her family foundation, the State Department owes it to the American people to release the thousands of work-related emails she failed to turn over before voters head to the polls,” Priebus said in a statement Wednesday. “If the State Department continues to withhold these emails, Hillary Clinton should demand they be released, or release them herself. Anything less than a full release of these public records before voting begins will only further prove that we have a rigged system that has one set of rules [for] political elites and another for everyone else.” ... The State Department has released thousands of emails from Clinton's private server as part of a court order. The former secretary deleted about 30,000 other messages that she said were personal, but the FBI recovered some additional work-related emails during its investigation of the server, and those have not been set for release. The FBI says it has found “several thousand” such messages, but the department has not committed to a schedule for their release.

Every single Democrat and journalist who has demanded the release of Donald Trump's tax returns should be clamoring for the State Department to makes these Clinton emails public immediately.  Remember, she was required by law to maintain her official correspondence, all of which she ran through her improper and unsecure private server.  She did not.  Her team of lawyers unilaterally deleted tens of thousands of emails, claiming that none of them were work-related.  The FBI determined that thousands of those deleted messages did pertain to her public duties, including a handful of classified emails.  She's subsequently lied about these facts.  Also bear in mind that the contents of thousands of additional emails that were successfully permanently destroyed may never be known -- except, perhaps, to the foreign regimes that hacked her bootleg system.  Layer upon layer of misconduct here.  It would be an outrage if voters aren't able to see what she's been hiding -- and lying about hiding.  These public records must be made public.  Now.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++4) Soon-To-Be-Released Book by Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton Warns of Massive Voter Fraud Danger in Current Presidential Election

‘This is especially important because of the lack of interest of the Obama Justice Department in investigating and prosecuting voter fraud’ – from attached pre-release chapter of Clean House

(Washington, DC) – A soon-to-be-released book by New York Times bestselling author Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton warns that America may now be facing the greatest voter fraud danger in recent history. And it lays the blame for the crisis directly at the feet of President Barack Obama and his Justice Department.

The book – Clean House (to be released August 30 from Simon & Schuster/Threshold Editions) – cites examples nationwide of attempts by the Obama Justice Department to thwart efforts to clean up voter rolls, require voter ID at the polls, and prevent voter intimidation.  In a chapter titled “Voter Fraud – Stealing Elections – The Danger of Voter Fraud and the Fight for Election Integrity,” Fitton describes major legal battles to protect voter integrity in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, Tennessee, North Carolina, Maryland, and Indiana.

[Click here for pre-release chapter.]

The book’s explosive “Voter Fraud” chapter reveals that:

• In Indiana, the Obama/Holder Justice Department opposed federally mandated efforts to clean up the voter lists – despite publically available information showing that “the number of people listed on voter registration roles in 12 Indiana counties exceeded 100 percent of the total number of residents of voting age in those counties.” – page 129

• In Florida, the Justice Department filed a lawsuit in 2012 to stop the state’s efforts to comply with the National Voting Rights Act by removing “53,000 registered voters who were dead-as well as an additional 2,700 noncitizens.” – page 134

• And in Pennsylvania, when the New Black Panther Party stood in a doorway of a polling place clad in black paramilitary uniforms, brandishing a nightstick, arguing with passersby, and shouting racial insults at poll watchers, “the case was abruptly curtailed and all but shut down by the newly appointed officials of the Obama administration.” – page 120

According to Clean House, America’s voter fraud crisis is both widespread and widely recognized. The book cites a recent Pew Research Center study revealing that “approximately 2.75 million people have active voter registrations in more than one state” and “20 million – one of every eight – active registrations in the United States are no longer valid or are significantly inaccurate.” And it cites a Rasmussen poll from August 2013 reporting that “only 39 percent of Americans believe elections are fair.”

“We have all heard about voter fraud and the attempts by liberal media organs like the New York Times and Ivory Tower academics to dismiss it as a nonexistent problem,” writes Fitton in the “Voter Fraud” chapter. “But is it real, widespread, and substantial to the point that it can decide elections. It also drives honest citizens out of the democratic process and breeds distrust in our government.”

4a)

by JOHN FUND

January 12, 2014 6:30 PM @JOHNFUND 

Undercover agents were able to vote as dead people, but election officials are attacking the agents. 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.

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.” 

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​.

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/368234/voter-fraud-weve-got-proof-its-easy-john-fund

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