The State of Iowa has voter fraud! OMG! Follow me below the orange VEISHA riot to learn more...
In Iowa, a two-year investigation uncovering a whopping 121 cases of voter fraud among a state of over 3 million people. Prosecutions of a couple of dozen are in various stages of resolution, although last month a 40 year old mother was acquitted after less than an hour of deliberation after the jury determined she did not knowingly lie on her ballot when she left the question about whether she was a felon was left blank.
Jury acquites ex-felon in Iowa voter fraud case
A few facts in this case shows how absurd the charge was. The election in question was a local municipal election for mayoral and council seats that were uncontested. In other words, this woman's vote was pretty much irrelevant because barring some unforeseen write-in campaign, the results were a foregone conclusion. The state, however, charged her with voter fraud and if convicted she could have faced up to 15 years in federal prison.
It's also worth noting that many of these alleged cases of voter fraud most likely stem from misunderstanding of the laws governing voting rights for convicted felons. During the time that Tom Vilsack was governor, he had signed an executive order granting ex-felons the return of their voting rights once their probation period ended. A few years later, Terry Branstad rescinded the order and required each ex-felon to apply directly to the governor's office for the return of their voting rights. So it's easy to see how someone could be confused as to the rules, especially if their probation period ended sometime around when Branstad changed the rule.
So what we have after two years of investigation is about 120 cases of possible fraud, but most of those were probably honest mistakes by people who didn't understand the rules. In three cases, felons released from prison voted before their rights were restored (it's worth noting that Iowa is one of only a handful of states in which voting rights are not automatically restored once one has completed one's punishment, btw). One woman admitted to voting for her daughter who had just moved to Minnesota but missed the deadline to register to vote in that state. The daughter did manage to vote in Minnesota, so the mother self-reported the vote cast in Iowa and received a fine. As of mid-December 2013, five other cases had been dismissed.
You might wonder how much it's cost the state to uncover this "massive wave" of voter fraud. About $280,000 and counting, and that's only for the investigation and does not include the state's cost in determining whether to pursue trials in each case or the cost of the trials themselves. Kinda makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside knowing that all that taxpayer money is being so well spent, right?
Oh, did I mention that in 2012, 812,000 votes were cast in the Presidential election here in Iowa (and this does not count any local elections that were included in the investigation)? Just wanted to put the number of alleged fraud cases into perspective, there. Even in the case of the mother acquitted in the case described above, hers was a single vote in which 110 votes were cast -- less than 1% of the total.
But wait, there's more!
You see, it's just come to light that at least 12 more individuals wrongly had their voting rights rejected - 9 who were ex-felons who'd had their voting rights restored and should have been allowed to vote, and 3 more people who should never have lost their voting rights to begin with.
Iowa Finds 12 Votes Were Wrongly Rejected
Schultz, whose office is responsible for maintaining the list of 46,000 ineligible felons, told lawmakers in February that the data is filled with so many inaccuracies that it could take years to fix. Court officials send his office names to add after convictions, while the governor's office sends names of those restored to be removed.
Maybe before we worrying about chasing a microscopic amount of voter fraud, most of which isn't really fraud but misunderstanding of the law,
maybe we should fix our own fucking records?!? Just a thought.