Election fraud is a mostly theoretical problem in the United States and these measures are causing far, far more harm than good.

This seems awfully thin, James.

This comment applies to the post about Indy being 105% registered, as well, wherein I think you commented that registration fraud doesn't equal vote fraud. IE; we can't PROVE that registrations submitted fradulently, are being used to generate actual votes.

First off, we have Ohio, where the Secratary of state...a Democrat, and of whom, Obama is quoted as saying he's comfortable with having her counting votes, who had to be court ordered to filter out the fraudulent applications. Her level of complience with that order would seem a question mark, given the law there, along with common freaking sense, would make such a ruling unnessasary at the off. Clearly, she wasn't interested in removing the Democrat-leaning ACORN fruad from the voting system. That's one example we know of, and I have no cause to think we won't find similar situations elsehwere assuming the press decides to look for it. Supporting Democrats themselves they're not overly motivated to expose this fraud.

Secondly, Any group that can slip these large numbers of fraudulent voter applications into the system isn't going to have much in the way of problems getting actual fraudulent votes on the boards, since we're talking about bureaucratic incompetence at least, and in some cases, such as Ohio, we're talking about the apparent aiding abetting outright vote fraud.

It seems a stretch to argue that this combination isn't producing fraudulant votes.

And remember, these large numbers we're seeing reported on, are only the ones we KNOW about. The numbers of the ones we've found out about suggest an iceberg scenario, with the obvious fraud being merely the tip of the 'berg. Who knows how many fraudulent registrations are being used to generate fraudulent VOTES?

And since the fraud uncovered is running 4 to one Democrat, and most of that from a group dedicated to supporting Obama, what do you suppose the chances are Obama ends up in offoce because of voter fraud?

I'd peg the chances as rather high.

I think the issue of precincts can easily be solved by requiring people to have their actually street address on their license or to bring a bill with their address on it to prove where they live.

If their address changes and the license is still valid then they can bring a piece of mail in to register.

In NH we have same day registration-you have to have a photo ID and a piece of mail to register and vote that day. I don't see any reason this wouldn't work.

If people don't have a license and don't want one, then they should offer free ID only for voting purposes to people who need or want them.

I think the registration systems aren't that good anyway-they don't really seem to appear legitimate.

You misspelled "off" in the title of the post. I only bring it to your attention because it's the title.

After the 2004 Governor's race in WA State (decided by ~132 votes) the voter rolls were scrubbed and the state probably has one of the better voter rolls in the nation, yet there are still systemic problems causing errors like this.

For clarification, someone who is 17 may register if they will be 18 by the next election. Today that means they had window of August 20, the day after the Primary, to Oct 5, registration deadline, to register for the November election if their birthday is between the cutoff and the election.

A standard driver's license doesn't contain precinct data. That would also mean that you must renew your driver's license if your state redraws it's precincts or districts.

The problem isn't whether the license in your wallet contains precinct data on its face. The reason registration is important is not because I get a card, but because the polling station has a list of people in their hands that tells them who can vote.

problem here appears to be bureaucratic incompetence and/or overzealousness in the pursuit of good intentions

Oh, make no mistake, not all of the intentions here are good

Election fraud is a mostly theoretical problem in the United States...

Is this really true? How well do we know?

If fund-raising fraud is any indication, then the risk of voter fraud ain't theoretical.

...these measures are causing far, far more harm than good

Perhaps they serve as a deterrent to fraudulant voters...

What about people who don't drive (young people in cities; retired people in Florida)?

Yeah, we all wish the retired people in Florida didn't drive.....

A standard drivers’ license would demonstrate that one is 1) of age and 2) lives in the state/precinct/ward, etc.

A standard driver's license doesn't contain precinct data. That would also mean that you must renew your driver's license if your state redraws it's precincts or districts. It would also mean that a bus load of people with fake IDs can give you 105% voter turnout.

em here appears to be bureaucratic incompetence and/or overzealousness in the pursuit of good intentions.

The article implies strongly that the latter is not the case. The key element appears to be that 6 or so states are using a demonstrably-inferior method of verifying registrations (the social security database) as a first resort instead of a last, which is allegedly resulting in a far outlying number of unverifiable registrations.

Why do you hate the poor? And minorities?