So, they can commit MORE voter fraud.

While NAACP President Benjamin Jealous lashed out at new state laws requiring photo ID for voting, an NAACP executive sits in prison, sentenced for carrying out a massive voter fraud scheme.

In a story ignored by the national media, in April a Tunica County, Miss., jury convicted NAACP official Lessadolla Sowers on 10 counts of fraudulently casting absentee ballots. Sowers is identified on an NAACP website as a member of the Tunica County NAACP Executive Committee.

Sowers received a five-year prison term for each of the 10 counts, (BYE, *****) but Circuit Court Judge Charles Webster permitted Sowers to serve those terms concurrently, according to the Tunica Times, the only media outlet to cover the sentencing.

“This crime cuts against the fabric of our free society,” Judge Webster said.

Sowers was found guilty of voting in the names of Carrie Collins, Walter Howard, Sheena Shelton, Alberta Pickett, Draper Cotton and Eddie Davis. She was also convicted of voting in the names of four dead persons: James L. Young, Dora Price, Dorothy Harris, and David Ross.

In the trial, forensic scientist Bo Scales testified that Sowers’s DNA was found on the inner seals of five envelopes containing absentee ballots.

This wasn’t Sowers’s first run-in with the law. Sowers previously had her probation revoked for disturbing the peace at a junior high school library, the Commercial Appeal of Memphis reported in 1990. During a hearing at that time, Sowers played the race card. She claimed to be the victim of “an attempt by powerful whites to silence” her, the newspaper reported. It didn’t work. She was ordered back to prison to complete the remaining two years of a three-year sentence she received for check forgery.


The NAACP has had other problems with voter fraud. The NAACP National Voter Fund registered a dead man to vote in Lake County, Ohio, in 2004. That same year, out of 325 voter registration cards filed by the NAACP in Cleveland, 48 were flagged as fraudulent.

But the NAACP’s voter fraud record doesn’t approach that of ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. At least 54 individuals employed by or associated with ACORN have been convicted of voter fraud.(OH, THESE SILLY LEFTISTS).

Voter fraud, sometimes called electoral fraud, is a blanket term used by lawyers that encompasses a host of election-related improprieties including fraudulent voting, voter registration fraud, perjury, forgery, counterfeiting, impersonation, intimidation, and identity fraud. (WRITE THAT DOWN, DUMOCRATS).

And ACORN, which filed for bankruptcy last November, was itself convicted of voter fraud in Nevada in April. Sentencing is scheduled for Aug. 10 in Las Vegas. ACORN was also banished from Ohio in 2010 when it settled a state racketeering filed against it by the 1851 Center for Constitutional Law, a project of the Buckeye Institute. Under the settlement ACORN, which is now reorganizing its state chapters under different names, agreed never to return to the state.

Election experts say voter fraud is fairly common, but progressive activists typically insist that the crime is virtually nonexistent. Republicans, they say, routinely exaggerate claims of voter fraud in order to whip their political base into a frenzy and push for voter ID laws. Liberals say such laws are unfair, and claim that they discourage minorities and the poor from voting.

The NAACP’s Jealous said Monday at the group’s 102nd annual convention in Los Angeles that photo ID laws are part of an attempt to disenfranchise minorities through some “of the last existing legal pillars of Jim Crow.” Such laws stem from “the worst and most racist elements” in conservative Tea Party groups, he said.

Stephen Colbert, the liberal comedian who portrays an overbearing conservative Republican on his cable TV show “The Colbert Report,” broadcast a segment this week ridiculing Republicans for treating voter fraud as a serious problem.

Some Democrats, however, aren’t laughing. The office of District Attorney Brenda F. Mitchell, a registered Democrat who serves Mississippi’s 11th Circuit Court District, successfully prosecuted Sowers. Mitchell was appointed to the post by Republican Gov. Haley Barbour in January 2010 after the previous DA resigned. She’s now seeking the Democratic nomination for the office in a primary election scheduled for Aug. 2.

Mitchell doesn’t appear to be a conservative. She served as a legal consultant to the far-left, New York-based public interest law firm the Center for Constitutional Rights. That firm represented ACORN in an ultimately unsuccessful lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of a federal law defunding the activist group. Mitchell didn’t return calls seeking comment for this article.

U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Minnesota Democrat, is also no conservative. But she won a conviction against Joshua Reed for voter registration fraud in 2004 when she was the Hennepin County, Minn. Prosecutor.

“It was very important for the public integrity of our electoral system that somebody, if they do something like this, gets charged, gets convicted and gets consequences,” Klobuchar said at the time.

Democrats, including Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto, Pittsburgh District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr., and Miami, Fla., State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle, have all vigorously prosecuted voter fraud cases.

I'm afraid I'll get labeled if I comment............lol

You do realize the NAACP has 1700 branches and almost a half million members,,,?

should we really expect the action of one or even ten to represent the whole organization or its goals?

what is wrong with Voter-ID?

it depends upon if voting is a right or a privilege,, rights dont usually require a fee (id card)

so anyone could walk into a Pollingstation and Vote,whether entitled or not?
Guess in November I'll travel to the US and gonna Vote in every Polling-Station all around the USA!

It's not that hard to get a photo ID and I do think proof of citizenship should be established at the polls before voting...The % of fraudulent voters in 08 was small, but even a small amount is too much...Obtaining photo ID's would prove costly and difficult for some, especially those who are handicapped, but with illegal immigration at all time highs, I think it could become a necessary evil...

they do in my Country!
My Voter-ID comes by Mail with the Ballots and the ID,,which I have to sign,but the Officer at the Pollingstation is within his rights to ask for additional Identification if he feels that I might have appropriated the ID unlawful.

Yes, US needs to clean up its' act....You know how I feel about the upcoming election, it is crucial and we have many problems at the polls...No excuse, we need to do better....When people scream about loss of personal freedoms I often wonder if they are really thinking it through and seeing the "bigger" pic...Individual accountability, in my mind, is a way to insure (and assure) personal freedom...I have no problem being required to present photo ID at the polls or, for that matter, anywhere....

All states require an individual to be a U.S. citizen in order to vote in state or federal elections. Each state requires its residents to provide some form of identification (“ID”) and Arizona even requires its residents to present proof of citizenship to be eligible to register to vote. Each state selects the form of ID it deems acceptable. In the least restrictive states, residents only need to have their signature verified. Other states permit residents to provide either picture ID or non-picture ID, including utility bills. In other states, residents are required to present picture ID. If the resident is unable to provide the required pictured ID, the individual may still vote if they sign an affidavit attesting to their ID. Finally, in the most restrictive states, individuals must present a government-issued photo ID and individuals unable to produce the required ID are not allowed to use an affidavit to attest to their ID and subsequently cannot vote.1

Regardless of a state’s ID requirements, the 2002 Help America Vote Act (HAVA) mandates that first-time voters who register by mail must provide ID either at the time of registration or the first time the newly-registered individual votes in-person.

Proof of citizenship and voter ID requirements are often justified on the grounds that they reduce the potential for voter impersonation. However, all available evidence indicates that voter impersonation occurs rarely, if at all. Election officials in Indiana, the state with the most restrictive ID laws in the country, acknowledge that there are no reported incidents of voter impersonation fraud in the history of the state.

Proof of citizenship and voter ID requirements impact all voters, but fall more significantly on traditionally disenfranchised groups like poor, minority and elderly voters. For example, a 2006 nationwide survey concluded that voting-age citizens earning less than $35,000 in annual income were more than twice as likely to lack government-issued ID as those earning more than $35,000.2 Similarly, the same 2006 study found that African-Americans are more than three times as likely as Caucasians to lack a government-issued photo ID, with one in four African –Americans owning no such ID.3 Additionally, a study determined that 25% of registered voters in Georgia who are over the age 65 do not own a driver’s license or state ID card.4 These three traditionally disenfranchised groups share a common trait – lower access to motor vehicles and thus a greatly reduced need for a driver’s license or similar form of ID.



__________
1For example, Indiana bars individuals from voting at the polls unless the voter presents a qualifying photo ID. The photo ID must be issued by the State of Indiana or the United States, it must bear an expiration date that has not elapsed, and it must contain the voter’s name in a manner that conforms to the voter’s registration record.
2Citizens Without Proof, supra, at 3
3Id.
4Billups, 439 F. Supp. 2d at 1311


http://www.866ourvote.org/elections-101?id=0004

Morning!

Good Morning Leigh!

Just thought I would post why I think he has a negative opinion
towards the voter ID reforms.



Today is starting out as a kind of social consciousness day...

Well, social consciousness does have its' place darling!!!



HAPPY 20...12!!

Your name has to be on the list at that polling station along with address and voter card....etc.....people committing voter fraud know this information....we only need to present ID if we dont have our voter card

Fraudulent voting is minimal in US, it's true, but how much is actually being detected??...What we really need to focus on is fraudulent Drivers License issuance...It is a real problem and because a photo drivers license has become de facto ID for purposes such as banking, travel, and yes, voting, we need better safeguards, especially when it comes to confiscating fake paperwork...There is a really good article on this at Driver.com....

Yeah when I was younger I let someone get an ID in my name to go into the bars.......

Yeah, a lot of us used fake ID's.... Chomping at the bit to get into the bars!!

HNY!!!!

Times have changed much since I was younger.

Yep now if you do the ID switch to get into bars and get caught you're a terrorist suspect