Are Republicans trying to steal your vote?

With rampant accusations about ACORN registration fraud, one has to wonder what has happened in America that fraud and "vote stealing" appears to be so rooted.

This isn't a problem that has bubbled up overnight, and clearly it is not a problem isolated to either Democrats or Republicans. Remember the hanging CHADs in the 2000 elections? Many people attribute the Bush win over Democrat Al Gore as nothing short of election stealing.

According to Wikipedia.org, election fraud is most likely as old as the electoral process itself. One of the first potential cases of election fraud is thought to have occurred in 471 BC. Archaeologists apparently found 190 pieces of broken pottery thought to have been ballots, with only 14 different handwritings, indicating fraud.

But how prevalent the problem is in the U.S. only now seems to be coming to light, with such polarizing elections the past few years causing increased tensions between the two ruling parties.

A recent BBC video highlighted the problems happening this election year, including charges by Republicans that ACORN has attempted to register millions of fraudulent illegal alien voters, and Republican attempts to refuse voters in Detroit, MI, if their names were on bank foreclosure lists, and huge voter record purging in New Mexico on largely low-income or poverty neighborhoods.

Introduction of secret ballots in the 19th century made electoral fraud more difficult, forestalling attempts to influence the voter by intimidation or bribery, but whenever you close one leak, another seems to always spring up elsewhere.

During U.S. Reconstruction efforts, entire populations of voters were denied their right to vote through means such as voter literacy tests, and other voting requirements that tried to side-step the newly franchised rights of former slaves.

But voter fraud isn't isolated to the United States. In the 1930s, Hitler arrested and murdered MPs from the Communist Party of Germany and Social Democratic Party of Germany which effectively intimidated remaining MPs enough to get his dictatorial powers passed.

Ferdinand Marcos, President of Philippines, was notorious for his rigged elections, and dictatorships across the globe have been known to have elections in which 100% of the potential registered voting pool votes, and nearly 100% votes the dictator back into office (clearly not very likely in any country).

In the United States, some of the most notorious voting fraud schemes include 19th century Tammany Hall in New York and the Daley machine of 20th century Chicago.

And even as recently as 2005 Europe has had claims of voter fraud embroiling its campaigns as well, including postal vote fraud in Birmingham and Hackney in 2004, and the United Kingdom’s general election of 2005 is still being reviewed in the court of appeals.

So it appears that although the charges of Republicans this election year are serious, and should be addressed with the seriousness with which it deserves, what is significantly more important at this point is to look further into how the behaviors of both Republicans and Democrats has and will affect honest voters across the country.

But, as with any election fraud, those affected are often lower-income or new voters or voters who don’t vote very often. Finding real fraud here would take the kind of time and money that Congress is not likely to provide anytime soon.

Additionally it appears that, as with everything else this election year, this is just another “thing” to throw into the mix of “things” that could rile voters and try to encourage them to vote on issues not related to a candidate’s willingness and readiness to take elected office.

And finally, for either party to accuse the other of voter fraud – well, that’s like the pot calling the kettle black, considering historic trends. If there should be any outrage at all, it should be the fact that many of our politicians and both our political parties, have and are, engaged in attempts at voter fraud, not whether one party or another is better or worse at accomplishing their fraudulant goals.