Voter Fraud and Cake

Again, d.j[ackass]. trump and those he pays to be loyal to him want their cake and they want to eat it too.  trump and his minions may think the world works this way if trump throws enough money at it, but in the long run it doesn't.

Yesterday I noted that "It's all about 'winning' for trump.  If he believes he 'lost' by any method of counting up the marbles, then he cries."  Using his favorite form of communication,  donnie boy  tweeted this week, 

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump Jan 25
I will be asking for a major investigation into VOTER FRAUD, including those registered to vote in two states, those who are illegal and....

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump Jan 25
even, those registered to vote who are dead (and many for a long time). Depending on results, we will strengthen up voting procedures!

Hmmmmmm?  Those registered in two states.  You mean like his son-in-law, jared kushner, who is jewish and thinks that steve bannon is acceptable at the very least?  Kushner, on November 8, 2016 was registered to vote  in New Jersey and New York.  You mean like steve goebbels bannon, who on 11/8/16 was registered to vote in Florida and  New York?  How about tiffany trump, registered in Pennsylvania and New York?  Would you believe sean spicer, in Virginia and Rhode Island?  Then there's steve mnunchin, treasury secretary nominee, in New York and California.  These instances are all reported by reputable sources, after appropriate research; The Washington Post, NBC News, The Sarasota Herald-Tribune, and CNN.

I want to point out that being registered in multiple states is not a criminal offense.  Stuff happens.  People move and forget to remove themselves from their old voting precinct.  As much as I don't like saying something positive about goebbels (bannon), I always try to be honest, so it is necessary that I note that he actively was attempting to get himself removed from the voter rolls in Florida.  So the very first item in donnie boys tweet is irrelevant.

The facts are (not alternative facts, mind you) that time after time and study after study it has been shown that there is no wide spread voter fraud in U.S. elections.   The following Studies, listed in a Washington Post Article dated 1/25/17, clearly show that each study is unable to find any significant voter fraud.  Certainly not on the scale that trump is claiming.  I feel sure that this list is far from exhaustive.

- In one of the most comprehensive investigations of fraud, Justin Levitt of Loyola Law School, Los Angeles turned up 31 credible instances of voter impersonation out of more than 1 billion votes cast between 2000 and 2014. Some of those cases may have been because of clerical errors. Levitt's investigation suggests that while voter impersonation does indeed happen, it happens so rarely that the rate is approximately one instance out of ever 32 million ballots cast. 

- A five-year voter fraud investigation conducted by the George W. Bush administration “turned up virtually no evidence” of organized fraud.....While the investigation did yield 86 criminal convictions as of 2006, many of those appear to have been linked to people misunderstanding eligibility rules or filling out paperwork incorrectly.

- In 2014, a two-year investigation into voter fraud by Iowa's Republican secretary of state yielded 27 criminal charges, a number of which, again, were apparently related to mistakes or misunderstandings of voting rules.

- In December [2016], a Washington Post analysis of news reports found four documented cases of voter fraud out of about 136 million votes cast. That would yield a voter fraud rate of one instance per every 34 million ballots, close to what Levitt's investigation turned up. Two of those fraud cases involved Trump voters trying to vote twice, one involved a Republican election judge trying to fill out a ballot on behalf of her dead husband, and the last involved a poll worker filling in bubbles for a mayoral candidate in absentee ballots in Florida.

- A team of Dartmouth researchers undertook a comprehensive statistical investigation of the 2016 results, looking for evidence of abnormal voting patterns. They checked for evidence of noncitizen voting, dead people voting and tampering by election officials. They didn't find any. “Our findings do strongly suggest, however, that voter fraud concerns fomented by the Trump campaign are not grounded in any observable features of the 2016 presidential election,” they concluded (emphasis theirs). “There is no evidence of millions of fraudulent votes.”

- The National Association of Secretaries of State, which represents most of the nation's top election officials (most of whom happen to be Republican), released a statement Tuesday [1/24/17] saying, “We are not aware of any evidence that supports the voter fraud claims made by President Trump.”

- In Kansas, the Republican secretary of state examined 84 million votes cast in 22 states to look for cases of duplicate registration. The project yielded 14 prosecutions, representing 0.000017 percent of the votes cast.

There are various Republicans that, in essence, call this dribble running out of trump's mouth and down his chin, nonsense. Paul Ryan the Republican Speaker of the House, on 1/24/17, when asked about trump's continued assertions of massive voter fraud said (looking very serious until the question was asked and then a big smirk came over his face), “I’ve seen no evidence to that effect. I’ve made that very, very clear,” 

Lindsey Grahm, the ultra conservative Senator from South Carolina, said in an interview on 1/24/17 "I wasn't there [at the meeting last night at the White House], but if the President of the United States is claiming that 3.5 million people voted illegally, that shakes confidence in our democracy — he needs to disclose why he believes that.  I would urge the President to knock this off.  This is the greatest democracy on Earth, we're the leader of the free world, and people are going to start doubting you as a person if you keep making accusations against our electoral system without justification.  This is going to erode his ability to govern this country if he does not stop it."And lastly, the cake eaters who want to have their cake and .......  ooooooooops, sorry, you already ate it! All gone! trump's campaign lawyers, who obviously were paid to do and say whatever trump told them to do and say, said the following in December of 2016 when Jill Stein called for a recount in Michigan:
“all available evidence suggests that the 2016 general election was not tainted by fraud or mistake.”

Hmmmmmmmmm!!!??!!!!??

p.s. - So, if trump's Department of Justice finds massive voter fraud, that would be an unbiased study, right?  Suuuuuuuure!!!!!!!