Democratic party still disenfranchising & oppressing votes

The details and degrees of vote fraud have certainly changed drastically, but Democrats are still trying to intimidate and disenfranchise voters. They are still trying to win elections using vote fraud and leveraging their institutional power to do so.  Though now, it starts at the top with the federal government and it has some ironic twists.

The Obama administration’s Department of Justice has just declared that the Civil Rights Act shall be enforced unequally and intimidation is permissible as long as specific groups are initiating it.

Former American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) voting rights project attorney Christopher Coates recently left his job as the Civil Rights Division’s Voting Section chief at the Department of Justice because he believed in the principle of race neutrality. And race was not the only area where DOJ would not enforce the law as it was written.

Part of the Help American Vote Act (HAVA) sponsored by retiring Democratic Senator Chris Dodd, involved provisions making certain types of vote fraud more difficult to execute. For instance, problems that had allowed the dead to vote or for people to vote twice were addressed by removing them from the voter rolls.  But, in the Obama Department of Justice, Coates and others were told that they were no longer enforcing those parts of the law.

Ironically, the only documented example of physical intimidation from the 2008 presidential race at a polling place involved paramilitary-garbed New Black Panther Party members outside a polling place in Philadelphia with a billy club.  Democrats seemingly condoned this activity by electing one of the two New Black Panther intimidators as a city “Democratic Committeeman.” Secondly, Obama’s Department of Justice decided not to accept a judgment against these intimidators.

But worst of all is the continued, systematic disenfranchisement of those serving in our military. Just like in the early days of the Civil Rights Movement, a few good Democrats in the Northeast are crying foul and trying to stop the disenfranchisement. In the extremely close 2000 presidential election, the Gore campaign and its lawyers attempted to steal the presidential contest by disenfranchising Florida military voters with hyper technicalities. The situation only stopped when then-Democratic Vice Presidential nominee Joe Lieberman agreed it was wrong.

In 2010, Senator Charles Schumer of New York co-sponsored the MOVE Act, which gave overseas military voters a better chance to have their votes counted. But here again, the Obama DOJ knowing that the majority of these ballots were to be cast for Republicans, did very little to guarantee the right of those in uniform to vote, outside largely symbolic actions taken in places like Guam.

Yet only when Schumer and others complained, did the Department of Justice respond by finally reacting in key states such as Illinois but as a result of all these DOJ efforts, military voters in Illinois have a few extra days to send in their ballots despite the fact election officials sent ballots weeks late to our men and women in uniform fighting abroad to defend our democracy.

Liberals will have you believe that disenfranchisement, intimidation, and other forms of vote fraud do not exist and make no difference in election results. But in the last two elections, the balance of power has been altered significantly due to vote fraud.

For instance, after the narrow election of John Tester in Montana provided Democrats with control of the United States Senate in 2006, Governor Brian Schweitzer of Montana bragged how he got Tester elected.

First, he helped pass the most corrupt system of voting, same day registration, which he knew would cause chaos and the opportunity for vote fraud.  Schweitzer then used Native American tribal police to threaten Republican poll watchers with imprisonment if they tried to observe elections on reservations.  Next, when realizing the election was going to be very close, Schweitzer called a key local Democrat election official, and told her in no uncertain terms that she was not done counting the votes until he told her so.

Next, in 2008, Democrats briefly reached the all important filibuster proof 60 seats in the Senate on the back of vote fraud. First, more illegal votes from felons were counted than the alleged margin of victory in the Minnesota contest between Norm Coleman and Al Franken.  Also, and just like in Montana, Democrats told inexperienced election officials, starting with the Secretary of State, who also happened to be overtly political, which votes to count and when.  Secretary of State Mark Ritchie ended up going back on the election handbook he wrote, which was supposed to serve as the rules and regulations for any recount.

Ritchie stated under no circumstances should absentee ballots that were rejected on Election Day be considered during a recount. After Franken’s lawyer asked him to do just that, Ritchie allowed it and it didn’t stop there. During the canvass, in the “only” error in Coleman’s favor, a local election official explained that some votes were double counted, yet under political pressure, the official changed her story.

Today, in places like Illinois, Democrats are trying to steal elections again in multiple ways. For one, they are attempting to disenfranchise the military.  And the effort is not just anti-Republican. For instance, recently, in mostly predominantly African American precincts in Chicago, election officials made an “error” in programming machines that resulted in Green Party Candidate Rich Whitney being listed as Rich “Whitey” on the vote confirmation screen.

The ultimate irony is that while some Democrats continue to disenfranchise our military, enforce our laws on the basis of race, condone the intimidation of elections officials and take away the right of people to have their votes counted, they continue to blast Republicans with groundless and hollow allegations of intimidation and disenfranchisement. This strategy was first discovered as part of their 2004 Colorado victory guide where Democrats were told to manufacture allegations of intimidation, even if none existed to generate publicity. That is exactly what’s happening this year

We can only hope there are leaders like Joe Lieberman and Chuck Schumer willing to step forward to 

Thielen is the executive director of the Republican National Lawyers Association (RNLA).