Posted on November 21, 2012

GOP Legally Barred from Fighting Vote Fraud

Bob Unruh, WND, November 20, 2012

Voting machines suspiciously defaulting to Barack Obama? Buses loaded with strangers appearing at polling stations? Even ballots turning out 100 percent for one candidate in precinct reports?

In short, suspicions of vote fraud?

That’s too bad, because a race-based consent decree negotiated by Democrats against the Republican National Committee a generation ago still has tied the RNC’s hands, and GOP officials could be cited for contempt — or worse — if they try to make sure American elections are clean.

Impossible?

No. Fact.

The case is the Democratic National Committee vs. the Republican National Committee, originally from 1982.

Democrats alleged Republicans were trying intimidate minority voters in New Jersey and brought the legal action. The RNC, inexplicably, decided to agree to a consent decree before a Democrat-appointed judge rather than fight the claims.

The judge, Dickinson Debevoise, appointed by Jimmy Carter, later retired but decided he would continue to control the case. The decision requires the RNC — but not the DNC — to “refrain from undertaking any ballot security activities in polling places or election districts where the racial or ethnic composition of such districts is a factor in the decision to conduct, or the actual conduct of, such activities there and where a purpose or significant effect of such activities is to deter qualified voters from voting; and the conduct of such activities disproportionately in or directed toward districts that have a substantial proportion of racial or ethnic populations shall be considered relevant evidence of the existence of such a factor and purpose.”

The rest of the agreement essentially requires the RNC to follow applicable state and federal election laws.

But the section cited above has been used for decades to warn off Republicans from any challenge to evidence of voter fraud in districts with “racial or ethnic populations.”

The law has remained, even though the RNC recently challenged it at the appellate level only to be turned down by Judges Joseph Greenaway Jr., appointed by Bill Clinton; Dolores Sloviter, appointed by Carter; and Walter Stapleton, appointed by Ronald Reagan, in the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

It now is pending before the U.S. Supreme Court.

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Republicans have tried to change the decree since 2009, after Obama took office. But Debevoise has ruled that they failed to show that conditions in the U.S. had changed since 1982.

Debevoise said that since most minority voters support Democrats, the RNC still has an incentive to suppress minority votes.

He dismissed the idea of voter fraud and extended his own supervision of the case until 2017.

In March, the 3rd Circuit issued its affirmation of Debevoise’s decision.

WND recently has reported on allegations of voter fraud, including a claim by a poll watcher in Pennsylvania who said votes reverted to Obama by default, no matter who the voter selected.

The incident took place in the state where officials claimed Obama received a total of 19,605 votes in 59 voting divisions to zero for Mitt Romney and not far from the 100 precincts in Ohio in which Obama got 99 percent of the vote.

With evidence mounting that the vote tabulation did not reflect the true choices of voters, talk-radio icon Rush Limbaugh declared: “Third-world, tin-horn dictators don’t get [these percentages]. I mean, the last guy that got this percentage of the vote was Saddam Hussein, and the people that didn’t vote for him got shot. This just doesn’t happen. Even Hugo Chavez [of Venezuela] doesn’t get 100 percent or 99 percent of the vote.”

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