Well, well, well. Republican and Indiana Secretary of State Charlie White was convicted by a jury of his peers for voter fraud.
"The irony is that White has been an outspoken defender of controversial voter identification laws, which are purportedly aimed at stamping out the kind of fraud he was found guilty of committing." Yep, irony can be pretty ironic sometimes.
His conviction is also ironic because voter fraud in America is so exceedingly rare. Even after five years of investigating, George W. Bush's Justice Department "turned up virtually no evidence of any organized effort to skew federal elections." Yet many Republicans take it as an article of faith that voter fraud -- almost exclusively by Democrats -- is so rampant that it costs (Republicans) elections.
I classify this article of faith in the same category as "welfare queens:" they want to believe that legions of evil poor people, mainly blacks, are subverting our democracy to grow the welfare state. A big part of their political platform depends on this false belief.
(On a darker note, I hope Mr. White's conviction does not signal a trend, as with vocally homophobic Republican politicians who get caught in public restrooms stuffing gay men, where the most pro-ID, anti-voter-fraud Republican is the one most likely stuffing ballot boxes.)
By Corey Dade
February 6, 2012 | NPR
URL: http://n.pr/Aril6m
