Crooked Elections Are A Part Of Our History

The Mainstream Media and its people responsible for disseminating the news on television and in newspapers these days have lost the trust of the American people. One reason is they give folks today the impression that they've never heard of crooked elections, ballot stuffing, voter fraud, or anything dealing with election tampering. 

Of course, while the use of trickery and intimidation to achieve a political win is usually focused on a Presidential Election, there have been many smaller local and state elections where the vote was anything but honest. And while the folks in the news business make me wonder about just how uneducated they are, contrary to what the Mainstream Media is feeding the public today, crooked elections have been around since the beginning of the founding of our republic. It's true. And yes I know it's sad, but it's true. 

Simply put, electoral fraud is illegal interference with the process of an election. Electoral fraud has many different forms. Here are the most common types of election fraud: there is ballot stuffing, mail-in ballot fraud, absentee ballot voter fraud, felon vote fraud, casting votes in the name of dead people, voter impersonation, fraudulent signatures, voter registration fraud, voter intimidation, voter suppression, voter "caging and purging." 

Voter "Caging and Puging" is a conscious act to deny someone the right to vote. It takes place when a political party or a partisan organization sends registered mail to addresses of registered voters that they already know are not going to vote for their candidate. 

Why bother doing that if they already know are not going to vote for their candidate? Well, there's a reason for that. All of the mail that's returned as "undeliverable" is placed on what is called a "caging list." 

How is that list used? The political party or partisan organization that sent the mail knows they can challenge the right to vote for anyone on the list. That means they can "purge" voters' names from the voting rolls. They can get away with this because election rules say that if voters are unreachable at the address listed on their voter registration, then they are not eligible to vote in that area. It's a pretty devious way of eliminating registered voters for your opponent. Crooked as hell, but the political groups do it. Yes, especially when you know that your opponent is leading in the polls and you want to stop your opponent's supporters from voting. 

Voter Suppression describes policies and tactics that place an undue limitation on the ability of citizens to cast countable ballots in an election. To me, doing something like Voter "Caging and Puging" is a form of Voter Suppression because they are limiting someone's ability to vote for the candidate of their choice. It's all about tactics used to suppress the number of voters who might otherwise vote in a particular election.

Voter Registration Fraud is a form of vote fraud in which someone registers to vote or registers someone else to vote using a fictional name or without that person's consent. The worst case of Voter Registration Fraud that comes to my mind deals with a Democrat-controlled political organization known as ACORN. 

ACORN worked to elect the 2008 Democratic Presidential nominee Barack Obama. While it was said at the time that ACORN was responsible for "massive voter fraud," we do know that ACORN workers in Seattle, Washington, committed what the Washington Secretary of State called, "the worst case of voter registration fraud in the history of the state of Washington." The group’s leader was convicted of false voter registrations and served nearly three months in jail. Four other ACORN workers on his team also received jail time.

Voter Impersonation is a type of vote fraud in which a person claims to be someone else when casting a vote. In 1982, an estimated 100,000 fraudulent ballots were cast in a 1982 Chicago election. After a Justice Department investigation, 63 individuals were convicted of voter fraud, including vote buying, impersonation fraud, fictitious voter registrations, phony absentee ballots, and voting by non-citizens.

Of course, one type of Voter Impersonation is voting in the name of a deceased person. Voting in the name of a deceased person is vote fraud because someone is casting a vote under the name of someone dead. The way that people get away with that is because the dead person's name is still on the state's list of registered voters. Believe it or not, there are political groups that are taking some states to court over the state's desire to clean the voting rolls of dead people. Some of these political groups argue that the Constitutional Rights of those dead people are being violated -- so their names must stay on the rolls. Yes, they are doing that even those the people are dead and obviously can't vote. 

Absentee Ballot Vote Fraud is when a person attempts to fill out and turn in an absentee ballot containing false information. For example, this can occur when a person attempts to fill out and turn in an absentee ballot with the name of a false or non-existent voter. The term can extend to manipulation, deception, or intimidation of absentee voters.

Felon Vote Fraud is when a person convicted of a felony, someone who is by law not eligible to vote as a result of the conviction, attempts to cast a ballot. Voting rights for convicted felons vary by state. But overall, Felons lose the right to vote when they are convicted of a crime. The interesting thing behind this is that Voter Fraud in most states is a Felony. So yes, the people in the political party and political groups that are doing any of this are felons.

And no, they are not above "suddenly finding uncounted votes" for their candidate. For example, in the 1948 United States Senate election held in Texas. Lyndon B. Johnson won the Democrat primary over his opponent Coke R. Stevenson by only 87 votes. Of course, Lyndon Johnson was accused of voter fraud in Duval County because it had initially appeared Stevenson had won the election. And really, Stevenson would have won if it weren't for the fact that a box of 200 votes was suddenly found out of nowhere for Johnson just when he needed them.

If you're thinking that that same thing happened to Joe Biden. History agrees with you. Suddenly, out of nowhere, thousands of votes were found for Biden when he was losing the election. While many believe that Mail-In Ballot Fraud had something to do with it, some say that Mail-In Ballot Fraud is merely a product of someone's imagination. They say that knowing it's a real modern-day problem.

Mail-In Ballot Fraud is another way to stuff ballot boxes. And yes, the 2020 Presidential Election relied heavily on mail-in ballots due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Of course, even with evidence such as videos showing that people dumped questionable amounts of Mail-In Ballots into the Post Office boxes to sway the 2020 election -- some people say that Mail-In Ballot Fraud played no part in the Election of Joe Biden. Those folks insist that Mail-In Ballot Fraud is a product of our imaginations.

Of course, Mail-In Ballot Fraud is not an imaginary problem. To prove that point, all one has to do is look at what took place in September of 2023 in Bridgeport, Connecticut. A judge there found evidence of mishandled Mail-In Ballots in the Democratic primary for mayor. That judge ordered a revote. 

It's true. Surveillance videos caught people stuffing Mail-In Ballot drop boxes in Bridgeport, Connecticut, during the Democratic primary there. In his ruling, Superior Court Judge William Clark addressed the inconsistency by saying he lacked the authority to postpone or cancel the general election. However, he said he had seen enough evidence of malfeasance to order a rerun of a September 12 primary in which incumbent Mayor Joe Ganim defeated challenger John Gomes by 251 votes out of 8,173 cast.

"The volume of ballots so mishandled is such that it calls the result of the primary election into serious doubt and leaves the court unable to determine the legitimate result of the primary," Clark wrote in his ruling. 

Judge Clark cited surveillance video that showed significant Mail-In Ballot stuffing. That's exactly what he saw after watching surveillance videos showing people stuffing multiple absentee ballots into outdoor collection boxes. Yes, something that some say can never happen to any degree.

And really, I hate hearing the line, "There's no such thing as widespread Voter Fraud." The 2003 mayoral primary in East Chicago, Indiana, was overturned by the Illinois State Supreme Court after evidence of widespread fraud was revealed. It's true. A political operative for the East Chicago, Indiana, Mayor's campaign is said to have persuaded voters to let him "fill out their absentee ballots in exchange for jobs." He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to three years of probation and 100 hours of community service. 

Fraud in the 2003 East Chicago Mayoral Primary was so widespread that the Indiana Supreme Court ultimately overturned the election results and ordered a special mayoral election that resulted in a different winner.

Of course, while Mail-In Ballot Fraud is all about "Ballot Stuffing or "Ballot Box Stuffing." Ballot Box Stuff is nothing new. It is all about casting illegal votes or submitting more than one ballot per voter. It's simply a form of electoral fraud in which a greater number of ballots are cast than the number of people who legitimately voted. The term refers generally to the act of casting illegal votes or submitting more than one ballot per voter when only one ballot per voter is permitted.

In 1844 during the New York City Election, New York City’s infamous Tammany Hall which was synonymous with political corruption and election fraud showed everyone what Ballot Box Stuffing is all about when it's done on a big scale for the times. In that election, there were 55,000 votes recorded even though there were only 41,000 eligible voters in the city.

In Kansas and Missouri, in 1855, Democrats wanted political power so they could make Kansas a "Slave State." They started secret societies called "Blue Lodges" with the sole purpose of gathering enough support to make Kansas a "Slave State" instead of a "Free State". Those secret societies were all about organizing to rig that election. The Democrats had a tried and true plan. They would stuff the ballot box on the day of the election to gain control of the legislature. 

How did they do it? Well, just before the election, a census was taken. Through the census, folks there found out that Kansas had a population of 8,601. And of them, 2,905 were voters. In Lawrence, Kansas, the whole town only had 369 voters.

But on election day, which was on March 30, 1855, it is said that about 1,000 armed pro-slavery Democrats rode into Kansas from Missouri to vote at the election. According to eyewitnesses, the Democrats arrived in over 100 wagons, all armed with guns, rifles, pistols, and Bowie knives. Believe it or not, it's said that they also brought with them two small pieces of field artillery. That's one way of making sure no one would contest their voting. 

Those pro-Slavery Democrats from Missouri stuffed the local ballots with over 800 votes. Being non-residents didn't matter, they intimidated the local folks there in Lawrence who were legal voters, they shot at one voter because he was a Republican and "an obnoxious free-state man." After they terrorized the town of Lawrence all night, they left the next day. 

The Democrats' plan of ballot stuffing worked in other locations in Kansas besides the town of Lawrence on that day in 1855. In fact, even though the recent census stated that there were only 2,905 legal residents registered to vote in Kansas, believe it or not over 6,300 votes were cast. 

As far as what happened once the authorities learned of what took place? The Territorial Governor Andrew Reeder, who was threatened by the pro-slavery Democrats, ordered another election to be held -- but another vote did not take place out of fear of what the Democrats would do to their towns. 

Imagine that. People got away with fixing an election because people were afraid of what the criminals would do in reprisal. 

Tom Correa