What Actual Election Fraud Looks Like

by dday

In 2002, Republican operatives in New Hampshire jammed the phone lines of the state Democratic Party on Election Day while they were attempting to organize get-out-the-vote efforts. This impacted thousands of volunteers and party operatives who were trying to ensure their voters turned out to elect Jeanne Shaheen over Sen. John Sununu. Sununu ended up winning by a few percentage points*, close to the margin expected from a successful ground game. Allen Raymond, one of the architects of the scheme, went to jail for it and wrote a tell-all book called How To Rig An Election. Raymond acknowledged that there were dozens of phone calls between his team and Ken Mehlman in the White House leading up to Election Day. And today, James Tobin, another operative, was indicted for lying to the FBI about the operation.

That would fall under the category of ACTUAL election fraud. It was targeted at a specific race, and it sought to impact thousands of potential voters at once by disabling Democratic GOTV efforts in a form of voter suppression. Contrast this with registering one voter named "Mickey Mouse" at a time, telling election officials about it, and then hoping it slips past them and that someone in a mouse suit shows up to the ballot box on Election Day.

But when looking at the reporting about these kinds of incidents, the very real election fraud isn't mentioned, and examples of the system working, where election monitors catch bad registrations ahead of time and nobody fraudulent actually votes, becomes the scandal of the century. It's enough to make you wonder if some outside force is driving the discussion other than the very independent media.

I eagerly anticipate the first mention of Tobin's indictment on cable news.


* - Avenging this stolen election with a Shaheen victory in the rematch this year is just one of the things we can do on November 4.


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