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 Todd DormanTodd Dorman is a columnist for The Gazette. His blog has been bringing smiles to readers' faces since November 2007. |
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What about the Snowbirds?
The voter fraud dragnet tossed out by Iowa Secretary of State Matt Schultz has ensnared three possible non-citizen illegal voter types, collared in Council Bluffs by the Division of Criminal Investigation.
The nefarious ring includes a Mexican citizen and two apparently befuddled Canadians.
Schultz and the DCI are checking out registered voters whose names also appear on a list of non-citizens who obtained Iowa driver’s licenses. These are the first charges stemming from that effort. Three feathers in the secretary’s cap.
But desmoinesdem over at Bleeding Heartland thinks the dragnet has some questionable holes:
Iowa has a lot of snowbirds. Are DCI agents in Pottawattamie County and elsewhere investigating wealthy people who have winter homes in other states, to make sure they have never cast absentee ballots in Iowa while voting on election day in, say, Florida or Arizona?
…If Iowa snowbirds are not being investigated for possible election fraud, on what grounds are they above suspicion? Anecdotally, I have heard of such double voting, although I’ve never heard Schultz express any concern about that kind of voter fraud.
Good point. Maybe it’s about time we put some of those snowbirds on ice, see if they’ll sing.
Todd, Todd, Todd.
Frozen birds don’t sing. It is either; put the deceased voter on ice, or, place ICE onto the illegal.
Wow…..they caught three !!! what did that cost us?
Schultz is the biggest political hack to ever hold that position!
Lori Cardella ran for Johnson County Board of Supervisors on the Republican ticket a couple of years ago and one ot the things that cost her the election—-besides running an anti government campaign in a county where the largest single employer is the government—was the fact that she and her husband are snowbirds with a home in Florida, cars registered in Florida, and a paper trail of having changed their voter registration to Florida and of having voted in Florida elections. They did not, however, double vote in the same election.
It doesn’t surprise me that there may be a handful of non-citizens registered to vote. The whole process is confusing enough for citizens much less for people whose English may be shakey and whose knowledge of how our system works close to zip. I’ve worked in the Auditor’s office during elections and there were voter registration cards coming in from students who listed their address in Illinois. I’ve also been one of those people standing on the street corner with a petition and have had non-citizens sign even though to be valid, the signature had to be that of an elgible voter.
To err is human. An ooops here and there is not evidence of a tidal wave of fraud.