Election fraud is not the same thing as voter fraud. Republicans never really cared either way.

[turbinetree]

An unfolding case of fraud in North Carolina is exposing the GOP's obsession with "election integrity" for what it is: a sham.

ADAM PECK
DEC 5, 2018, 12:41 PM


There is still much we don’t know about what transpired in North Carolina’s 9th congressional district, but what we do know is alarming: a man with ties to Republican congressional candidate Mark Harris and several other local GOP officials paid multiple women to collect strangers’ absentee ballots, and Harris narrowly won both the GOP primary and general election thanks to nearly impossible margins in the absentee vote.

It’s too early to say definitively, but North Carolina Republicans could very well end up being responsible for the biggest case of election fraud in modern U.S. history.

And therein lies an important distinction: what we are watching unravel in slow motion is a textbook case of election fraud. It is not, as many have either carelessly or intentionally claimed, voter fraud.

First, a few distinctions. Election fraud is the act of infiltrating and disrupting the normal democratic process of voting, usually with the expressed intention of affecting the results. If your objective is to commit election fraud, you aren’t focused on individual votes but entire swaths of voters. Think hacking a digital voting machine and manipulating the data, or, in the case of North Carolina’s 9th congressional district, stealing, withholding, or altering dozens of absentee ballots. It is one person, or a small group of people, trying to alter hundreds or thousands of votes at a time.

https://thinkprogress.org/election-fraud-not-voter-fraud-north-carolina-9-congressional-district-4e2a27b6b307/


The questioned that needs to be asked ...............has this been done in other states..................

[yonder]

1. I've been paying attention to this distinction for a few years now,

Last edited Thu Dec 6, 2018, 08:38 PM - Edit history (1)

and wonder what George Lakoff might have to say about it.

from the link:

"The second reason is the more pertinent one, though. Republicans don’t care about election fraud in North Carolina because they never cared about protecting the integrity of elections in the first place. Their obsession with voter fraud has nothing to do with ensuring ineligible voters don’t cast ballots, it has everything to do with ensuring certain eligible voters don’t cast ballots."

Until this past election, I don't know when the media has ever referred to this issue as "election fraud". Virtually every report you read about calls it "voter fraud" which leads me to believe that the meme fix is in, has been for while and that skid was greased by exactly those shady conservative types who are responsible for actual election fraud.

The Kris Kobachs/Diebolds of the world have had a lot to gain by pushing this idea that somehow there is a massive, organized army of citizen volunteers who cast a vote, run out to their cars, change shirts/hats/whatever and come back in to recast the same vote, there or elsewhere. The reports I've read indicate that while voter fraud does occur, it is a very, very small percentage of votes cast. One way that is evidenced is by the tiny charged/conviction rates. Voter fraud just doesn't happen in any meaningful way.

However, those committing actual election fraud have everything to gain by dangling this "voter fraud shiny thing" in front of peoples faces to distract them from what is really going on, and has been going on for as long as votes have been cast.

Time for the media to step up and call it what it is.