In December of 2011 Newt Gingrich needed 10,000 signatures to get his name on the Virginia presidential primary ballot. Adam Ward, 28, collected more than 11,000 signatures according to prosecutors. More than 4,000 signatures could not be verified by investigators.
Tuesday night, Ward pleaded guilty to 36 counts of voter fraud and perjury in Augusta Circuit Court.
Sentencing is scheduled for December.
I didn’t know young people, college kids and blacks in Georgia were so enthused about Newt.
You can have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, or democracy. But you cannot have both.
Whatever Works 
Delicious, actually. 🙂
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In point of fact, we’ll never know how much voter fraud goes on because the GOP is prevented by legal decree (Democratic National Committee v. Republican National Committee (1981)) from investigating voter fraud or even applying any form vote security except in all White precincts.
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jonolan – ???? Expand on that? Are you saying only the GOP is barred from investigating voter fraud? HOw is such a thing even enforceable – wouldn’t such fraud be a criminal matter and the process begin with a complaint and that can come from anyone?
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Yes, only the GOP is so barred by the court-ordered settlement in Democratic National Committee v. Republican National Committee. And it is a criminal matter but one that would require investigation before the law could be brought in…Oh, and the GOP is not allowed to have law enforcement at the polls so that leaves out direct LEO investigation…
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Astonishing. I just went a-googling and read some of this. I’d like to find some nonpartisan legal / political opinion on it but I’m not finding any yet. This one is genuinely bizarre – I get entirely why they consented in ’81 to the rule. They had been very very bad boys. But that was over 30 years ago – I can hardly believe it’s still in place. And why would the decree have applied nationally? It was a NJ case – or was that a federal court?
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Federal court and the courts have refused to waive it even as late 2012. So…the GOP can do absolutely nothing about preventing or investigating voter fraud except in what amount to all White precinct…and so in turn we really have no idea how much voter fraud really goes, especially if one includes “unintentional” voter fraud, e.g., voting in a precinct that you’ve moved out of recently.
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jonolan, you assume only the GOP investigates voter fraud, which I don’t accept. Dems and unaffiliated groups are free to do it.
Any idea why did they agreed to such a sweeping order in ’81? Quite remarkable in its scope. And yet they agreed.
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The Dems aren’t going to investigate Dem voter fraud, Moe.
As to why the GOP accepted this – I assume the judge let them know that they’d better do so if they knew what was good for them. Judges have done that before.
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At Wall Street Journal Law Blog from 2008 (includes a link to an original article):
“Moving on to the middle of the A section, there’s a news story, June Kronholz’s “Rising Tide of Suits Filed in Search of Political Edge.” Kronholz reports that the number of suits challenging election procedures could hit an all-time high this year as parties angle for an edge. In the past few days alone, voters and the Republican Party have filed suits challenging the way elections are being run in Colorado, Pennsylvania, New Mexico and Virginia. By one law prof’s count, 34 major suits are pending involving the presidential race.”
WSJ blog post here:
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2008/10/30/election-law-litigation-everyones-doing-it/
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Finally! A genuine case of voter fraud
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/04/26/officials-found-guilty-in-obama-clinton-ballot-petition-fraud/
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And the perps were caught in both cases], so that’s good. These are the kinds of fraud we have always seen of course. Not good, but not new either.
What was new in ’10 and ’12 – and my point actually – was the coordinated move (NOT by the Dems) to change State laws and make it harder for targeted groups of voters to actually vote. it was also the GOP – including a very loud Gingrich – who were having the vapors over ‘illegals’ voting even though there was no evidence.
By the way pino – both of the cases you and I cited were about primary petitions, not about actual votes.
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Dems/Reps, the power elite………….are they really all that different?
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@T4T,
Now that I’ve been blogging for three years I’ve formed an opinion on that. The answer is yes. And no. Naturally.
Both kinds are of course of the political persuasion and must conform to the political process we have. We send them to the halls of government to (presumably) exercise wisdom in setting rules for our collective behavior and spending while we constituents go about our daily lives. Democrat politicians generally behave as though government is trustworthy and can provide both safety and civilizing balm that makes life better for everyone. Republicans are suspicious of government and are most energized by aggressive foreign policies and laws benign to business and industry.
But both parties are forced by the rules of politics to pretend to be doing the right thing while compromising between giving us what we say we want and the consequences of doing so. The simile of making laws to making sausage is perfect, is it not?
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T4T, I’ll agree with Jim and say the answer is both yes and no. Each side is aligned with power groups, and there is a difference in their areas of interest. And of course,, that’s politics.
And I’ll agree with you that there is an ugly institutionalization of cronyism among the powerful everywhere – they protect themselves to retain that power – the very definition of elite.
All of that is, I think, business as usual. Or maybe I should say WAS business as usual. Today is different. Extreme wealth especially in the financial services industry, where they create nothing but wealth, and a dangerously growing income gap is toxic. And it will lead to instability in our political process. Indeed I think it already has.
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I’ll further agree with Jim and Moe one what Jim stated.
I will, however, point out that the politicians of either party are alike in that they want to get or keep their jobs and the rich rewards that they’ll garner through them, both during and after being in office. They will lie, cheat, pander, and steal in furtherance of that mission. In that they are the same.
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Let me quote Mark Twain:
“There is no distinctly Native American criminal class…save Congress. “
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paid Gingrich Communications $220,000 over two years; the charity shared the names of its donors with Gingrich, who could use them for his for-profit companies.
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Opponents of Colorado Senate President John Morse on Monday turned in more than 16,000 signatures demanding the Democratic leader’s recall. That’s more than twice the number required to trigger a special election that’s expected to be fought behind the scenes by national interests on both sides of the gun control debate.
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