“Gee, nothing to see here. Move along.”

Progressives/liberals/Democrats who have ranted against common sense proposals to require voter identification keep insisting no ID is required to vote because there’s no proof of vote fraud.

A summary prepared by the liberal Brennan Center for Justice lays out all the academic “studies” that prove vote fraud is simply a myth created in the minds of Republicans and conservatives who are trying to suppress the votes of minorities.

Here’s one example:

A News21 analysis of 2,068 alleged election-fraud cases since 2000 shows that while fraud has occurred, the rate is infinitesimal, and in-person voter impersonation on Election Day, which prompted 37 state legislatures to enact or consider tough voter ID laws, is virtually non-existent.

What amazes me is that those claims are echoed by some partisan left wingers from Chicago, where vote fraud has been so rampant for so many years that it’s become a joke. In a town and a state that has sent scores of public officials to prison for corruption, we’re supposed to believe that elections are as pure as Mother Teresa?

Somehow those studies missed an award-winning investigation of vote fraud done by the Chicago Tribune in 1972. In it, a Tribune reporter worked undercover for three months in the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners. Here are some of its findings:

*Evidence of more than 1,000 cases of election fraud in the March 21 primary election has been discovered by a Tribune Task Force reporter who worked undercover for three months in the Chicago Board of Election Commissioner’s City Hall offices.

* The numerous forgeries found in the 7th Precinct of the 24th Ward were so crudely done that in many cases names were misspelled on the ballot applications. Donald Doud, a handwriting expert, identified 17 ballot applications in this precinct as being executed by the same writer.

*Democratic Party bosses have seized control over the appointments of Republican election judges in hundreds of key precincts and have destroyed the bipartisan election system in the large areas of Chicago.

*Control of Chicago election judges has been so loose in past elections that the judges take turns switching parties for each election.

*A 46th Ward Democratic precinct captain, his wife and the wife of his assistant precinct captain were indicted by the county grand jury yesterday for voting from a precinct where they did not live during the March primary.

*It is not just loyalty to the Democratic Party which has spawned partisan election boards in many of Chicago’s wards. More often than not, it is a matter of survival for the local Democratic precinct captains and patronage employees. The Tribune Task Force uncovered hundreds of election judges who violated election rules. Many did so out of ignorance, others, in order to survive the competitive patronage system. .

*The federal grand jury that indicted 40 persons for vote fraud last week will soon return at least 20 more indictments.”

*Vote fraud is an old story in Chicago. Only the names change when exposing the guilty. Currently, the Democrats are suspected vote stealers. A half century ago, Republican precinct workers sponsored by Mayor William H. Thompson were being hauled into courts to face charges resulting from their overzealous campaign strategies.

Well, there’s plenty more. The Election Fraud Blog reported this:

To get the ballot applications out of City Hall, [undercover reporter William Mullen] says, “I had to stuff them down the front of my pants and go to the Tribune. They’d have a bunch of photographers lined up to take photos of each document and then I’d stuff them back down my pants and return them. Then we knocked on doors and told people we thought their names had been forged.” The voters confirmed the forgeries and the paper won a Pulitzer for the reporting in 1973.

No doubt, I’ll be instructed that vote fraud in Chicago now is less than it was in 1972, and perhaps that’s so; Democrats now dominate Chicago so extensively that fraud isn’t required. And yet, it’s so easy. Easier than following the law.

Here’s an example: As a Chicago Daily News reporter I was assigned the job of checking out the validity of names of nominating petitions. Getting valid signatures is a tedious and time-consuming jobs, so “round-tabling” was practiced. It practitioners would sit around a table, passing around nominating forms, forging the names of people on the voting rolls. When I knocked on the doors of just about all of the dozen names on one petition, practically all said that they didn’t sign the forms.

Whether taking short cuts for convenience sake or padding the precinct elections results is so easy, it’s all still election fraud.

Public health “experts” are talking about requiring proof of vaccination against Covid-19 to dine out, fly, attend entertainment venues and more. If requiring a voter ID is so difficult that no ID should be required, how do these experts expect that proof of vaccination would be less difficult?

Such is the state we find ourselves in, in a place where reason and facts no longer count.

Related:

Election fraud Chicago style: Illinois’ decades-old notoriety for election corruption is legendary
5 Face Election Fraud Charges in DuPage County, State’s Attorney Says
Great Moments” in Chicago Elections History
Election Fraud: A Primer
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