Thom Hartmann: Vote Rigging – The GOP is taking advice from Stalin .
The raging debate in Washington over the debt ceiling may help to determine the short-term fate of our nation – but the battle over the long-term future of our democracy isn't being fought on Capitol Hill. Voter Suppression ID laws, cuts to early voting, long lines in heavily Democratic precincts, and new hurdles to voter registration are nothing compared to this latest vote-rigging scheme. While most of us are focused on "fiscal cliffs" and budget battles in Washington, DC, the real fight for the future of our democracy is, right now, happening in State legislatures in Wisconsin, Ohio, and Michigan.
Think Progress: Pennsylvania House Republicans Introduce Bill To Rig The 2016 Presidential Election
-By Ian Millhiser
January 16, 2013- Earlier this week, Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus endorsed a Republican plan to rig the next presidential election to make it nearly impossible for the Democratic candidate to win the White House, no matter who the American people vote for. The election-rigging plan, which would allocate electoral votes by congressional district rather than by states as a whole in a handful of states that consistently vote for Democratic presidential candidates, would have allowed Mitt Romney to narrowly win the Electoral College last November despite losing the popular vote by nearly four points.
Pro Publica: How Dark Money Helped Republicans Hold the House and Hurt Voters
-by Olga Pierce, Justin Elliott and Theodoric Meyer
December 21, 2012- In the November election, a million more Americans voted for Democrats seeking election to the U.S. House of Representatives than Republicans. But that popular vote advantage did not result in control of the chamber. Instead, despite getting fewer votes, Republicans have maintained a commanding control of the House. Such a disparity has happened only three times in the last century.
(Here’s a chart comparing 2010 and 2012.)
Analysts and others have identified redistricting as a key to the disparity. Republicans had a years-long strategy of winning state houses in order to control each state's once-a-decade redistricting process. (Confused about redistricting? Check out our song.)
Think Progress: REPORT: ‘Voter Fraud’ Protection Group Submitted Forged Documents To Ohio Election Officials
-By Josh Israel
November 6, 2012- Volunteers with True the Vote, a Tea Party group that claims it is trying to fight voter fraud by challenging the right of voters to vote, may have committed fraud themselves. Plunderbund, an Ohio-based political blog, reported Monday that members of the group attempted to sign up as poll observers in African American-heavy precincts in central Ohio, but may have forged signatures to do so.
While local candidates officials had authorized members of the group to serve as designated observers on forms filed in October, five of the six Franklin County candidates had withdrawn permission to use their signatures prior to the submission of this week’s forms. According to one candidate, the True the Vote volunteers simply “forged” her name onto the document — possibly a 5th degree felony.
According to the report:
Washington Post: Virginia voter fraud case expands to focus on GOP firm
-By Carol D. Leonnig and Tom Hamburger
November 2, 2012- The investigation into the arrest of a man on charges of dumping voter registration forms last month in Harrisonburg, Va., has widened, with state officials probing whether a company tied to top Republican leaders had engaged in voter registration fraud in the key battleground state, according to two persons close to the case.
A former employee of Strategic Allied Consulting, a contractor for the Republican Party of Virginia, had been scheduled to appear last Tuesday before a grand jury after he was charged with tossing completed registration forms into a recycling bin. But state prosecutors canceled Colin Small’s grand jury testimony to gather more information, with their focus expanding to the firm that had employed Small, which is led by longtime GOP operative Nathan Sproul.
