Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Voter Fraud & the Presumption of Guilt

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When I was growing up, I was taught in American History
and Civics classes that in the United States we would prefer
for 9 guilty men to go free than have 1 innocent man unjustly
punished by our judicial system.

For this reason the presumption of innocence was considered
sacrosanct.  However the GOP justifies the new measures it
wants to pass to protect against voter fraud that so far has
not been reliably documented by saying that any fraud is too
much.

Given that most of these measures clearly block many
legitimate voters from voting, the new formula seems to be
that it's better that hundreds or even thousands of innocent
voters are denied the vote rather than one fraudulent vote
get through.  In other words, many voters are presumed
guilty of voter fraud unless they can prove their innocence.

Of course in the eyes of the Republican legislators passing
these measures, the overwhelming majority of potential
voters these laws keep from voting are guilty of one
significant crime:  voting for  Democrats.

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1 comment:

John McDermott said...

An interesting analogy, and well reasoned, but it can be pushed too far too easily. Don't we always presume guilt when we ask for ID? Yet we do because if we don't some people will prove themselves untrustworthy.

What we need here is some solid evidence on the extent of voter fraud. You believe it to be small, but others do not.

Still, one cannot disagree with your conclusion that R's support the laws to reduce D votes. The only question is: of these lost D votes, how many are fraudulent.

J H M