So, when will these criminals be charged with the felonies they committed? On the Voter Registration form it states “Giving false information to register to vote or attempting to register when not qualified is a felony punishable by not less than one (1) year nor more than six (6) years’ imprisonment or a fine of $3,000 or both”

It is erroneous to refer to the castings of these provisional ballots as "illegal". The intended purpose of provisional ballots is to accomodate voters whose registration is questioned, allowing the determination of eligibility to be made later. (Letting these people cast standard ballots would have been illegal.) In fact, 462 of the 1,402 provisional ballots in Davidson County were counted. That's 462 voters who would have been outright rejected in years past, who the commission deteremined really were registered and eligible to vote. Their right to vote was preserved by the provisional ballot program. The remaining 940 were presumably rightfully denied.

It's particularly lame of the election commission official Heim to suggest that these people "disenfranchised" others by making the lines longer. If they weren't prepared for that level of turnout, then it's the election commission's failing. What if turnout had been a little higher? Why is any election in our country ever conducted without the capacity to accommodate 100% registered voter turnout in a timely fashion?

Finally, Matt K., it's not clear at all that the 940 rejected ballots were filed in bad faith. MUCH more likely is that these people believed they were registered but were not or other such mix-ups.

Finally, Matt K., it's not clear at all that the 940 rejected ballots were filed in bad faith. MUCH more likely is that these people believed they were registered but were not or other such mix-ups.

That's not credible. The rejected ballots were from people who didn't pass the residency requirements or some other such problem. For them to believe that they were registered just doesn't make sense.

The fact that they came from a- how to say this nicely- area that the Democrats would target for voter fraud should be setting off the alarm.

Michael Chaney, I'm not sure exactly what alarm it is you think should be going off. It looks to me as if the system worked exactly as it should. 462 legal votes that otherwise would not have been counted were cast and 940 votes that should not have been counted were not counted. Where exactly is the problem? What fraud are you talking about? And can you support your assertion of knowledge ("The rejected ballots were from people who didn't pass the residency requirements...") about what rendered these ballots invalid? That information does not appear to be contained in the linked article.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out why 940 ballots were thrown out, does it?

That's 940 people who weren't eligible to vote, but did anyway. The *best* case I can come up with is residency requirements. Either way, it's still fraudulent to vote- even with a provisional ballot- if you have no right to in that district.

The fact that 2/3 of the provisional ballots were thrown out should be your wakeup call. If it's not, then you have such a fundamental misunderstanding of this problem that I cannot help you understand...

Hi-
I've been trying to drum up some interest in filing followups like the above on fraud reports (see my comments to the October 29 post.) Hope folks will watch their local news and link to followup stories.

> It doesn't take a genius to figure out why 940 ballots were thrown out, does it?

No, it takes an examination of each of the ballots or an inquiry to the election commission. It doesn't take a genius to not leap to conclusions without evidence. The criteria applied here may have been very stiff (to assiduously avoid fraud, mind you).

> It's still fraudulent to vote- even with a provisional ballot- if you have no right to in that district.

No, fraud is dependent on *intent*. If the voter was simply mistaken or confused, then it's not fraud. You are willing to assume that it was all underhanded based on where this happened. I prefer to live in the--how to say this nicely--*reality* based community and therefore make my conclusions based on the evidence instead of looking for evidence to support my conclusion.

What I am willing to say is that the chance that over 900 people just happened to have tried to vote illegitimately in a single precinct is simply too high a number to be an accident. It's likely that *some* of them did it unintentionally, as in other precincts.

You may not have been reading here about the voter fraud issues before the election, but this tactic smacks of some of the tricks that we were warned of before the election. It's preposterous to suggest it's an accident.

Michael Chaney wrote:
"What I am willing to say is that the chance that over 900 people just happened to have tried to vote illegitimately in a single precinct is simply too high a number to be an accident."

You might want to re-read the article. It said that 1400 provisional ballots were cast in DAVIDSON COUNTY, not one precinct of the county. Furthermore, according to the Nahsville city gov't website 241,675 people voted. This means that provisional balloting (including those that were deemed invalid) still only amounted to roughly one half of one percent of all votes cast. Given that over 450 of those provisional ballots were deemed valid, the ratio between legitimate ballots of all kinds and "illegitimate" provisional ballots is something on the order of 200:1. This hardly screams election fraud to me.

Furthermore, in my experience monitoring polls (admittedly not in TN) the following types of reasons accounted for the vast majority of people who came to the polls to vote and were turned away or forced to vote provisionally.

a) Voters were legitimate residents of the precinct in which they voted but failed to follow all the procedural rules necessary to establish proper registration (e.g. failed to check certain boxes on the voter registration forms, failed to submit the proper verification of residence, etc);

b) Voters legitimately thought that they were voting in the correct precinct, when they were not, perhaps due to their own confusion, inexperience voting (notice how many ineligble provisional ballots came from the precinct including TSU), or recent change of residency (again think about TSU);

c) Regardless of (a) or (b), poll workers sometimes misunderstand or poorly communicate the rules governing proper voting. Therefore, voters with the best of intentions are sometimes misinformed or misdirected when they, if they had been given the proper information, would have been able to vote on a normal ballot. Without knowing TN election law, I'm not sure exactly how this would play out in Nashville, but I do know in Florida I've dealt with multiple would-be voters who called an election hotline and were told to vote in Precinct 142 say when in fact they were supposed to vote in Precinct 143 or who were told to vote in Precinct 143 but given the address of another precinct's polling location to go to.

I'm shocked, so much so, oh no!

Here, there and everywhere!

Shock Attacks felt by Americans have reached record highs. Oh no, what shall we do?

"... the important step is that proof of residence in the jurisdiction has to be met and that wasn’t being followed,"..."That law was not being followed at the precincts or we would have had far fewer than these 1,400 ballots."

The real question is why were poll workers hired by the election commission NOT FOLLOWING THE LAW?!

The real question is "Why the hell shouldn't every voter be required to show proof of citizenship and residency, or be told to get the hell out of line? Provisional ballot my butt, just do it right in the first place.

Well guess what. Kerry lost get over it u sore losers . get off keryy's nutz. aigght den. im outie

Since many of the articles on this site illustrate alleged illegal activites during the last election, where are the stories about follow up investigations? Illegal activities ceratinly warrant law enforcement investigations, do they not? The practice of democracy depends on legal, free, and fair election practices. I have read about numerous law suits, hearings, and continued fact-checking being done by the Democrats. Please post some new updates to these allegations.

Let me first state that on the political spectrum I tend strongly to the left. However, I'm not a blind party follower. Therefore, I believe I would only be kiding myself if I were to believe that Democrats do nothing unethical within the election process. However, this does not justify election fraud on either side. This is a democracy, and the cornerstone of this democracy is our right to vote. So instead of pointing fingers, or supporting our parties blindly, maybe we should be holding them accountable instead of pointing fingers at each other. To turn a blind eye towards any potential or possible voter fraud is only to weaken the strength of the American citizen to force change in our country.
Republicans should at least consider the fact that there is evidence showing possible election fraud from their party, and instead of stubbornly denying it, think of how it may actually affect you and democracy. Please.

I don't see what's so hard about going through the process to register to vote properly. You can do it when you get your driver's license, change your address, or renew your license. It's never been easier.

With that said, Democrats that are carping about "disenfranchisement" need to look no further than their local election commissions-- which, for the most part, are run by mostly Democrat appointees. If it's such a problem for people to figure out where they're supposed to vote, there's not enough workers at the polls, etc., I would think that the Democrat party would "clean house" and install some more effective and intelligent election officials.

With that said, I do know for a fact that voter fraud is rampant in many of these "inner city" areas. I used to live in downtown Louisville, and I have seen vanloads of people coming into polling places-- none of them on the books, all of them filling out provisional ballots. It's simply the modern incarnation of "vote hauling" and all the shenanigans that have plagued this country from its inception. It's high time to establish some standards for voters at the polls, ostensibly through the use of some kind of national voter ID card that could be updated every time a voter changes addresses, gets rezoned, etc., so that the computers at the polling station could alert the voter that they're at the wrong polling place. The technology already exists-- why not use it?