1243 Voter Fraud

We have customized cars, customized kitchens, customized computer programs.  We have custom made suits and formal gowns.  We have customized furniture, customized cookies, customized blends of coffee or tea.   So what’s all this fuss about customized election districts?

You hate congress, right?  Everyone does.  But you like your own Representative, right?  Almost everyone does.

So why surprise and anger at customizing the voting district to reward that likable fellow with what amounts to a lifetime job?

Look at John Dingell (D-Michigan) who has served for just under 58 years.  Or Thad Cochran (R-Mississippi) with almost 42 years in the House and Senate.

Dingell is #1 and turns 87 this year.  Cochran is #37 and will be 76 before year’s end.

These two are each the longest “serving” members of their parties at the moment.

In between, there are some household names, names you know because all, though they’re dead, retired or lost their most recent election, have had their names in print and on the air forever.

Robert Byrd.  Strom Thurmond.

Those figures in the 30-40-50- years?  They’re just too long.

Of course, you have to forget the senate because senators don’t have districts. But representatives serve in two year clips.  And many if not most of the districts are customized just as carefully as a hand made suit from a Savile Row tailor.

The suit wears out in a couple of dozen wearings.  The district lives on for at least ten years… until the next census, maybe longer.

If all this isn’t voter fraud enough for you, consider what the Republicans in states like Arizona, Texas, Pennsylvania and elsewhere are trying to pull.  

State issued photo voter ID cards are just a way from keeping Democrats from voting.  The state governments say they’re only trying to prevent fraud.

Voter fraud in this country --scarcer than Polio -- is minimal to infinitesimal.  And there is no recorded instance in which it changed an election result since the invention of the photograph.

So between the ID card thing and the custom tailored districts, who is perpetrating the fraud?

Shrapnel (High Tech Robbery edition):

--Oh boy, new versions of the iPad, just in time for holiday shopping and Apple’s bottom line.  Faster, sleeker, more HD than if Johnny Depp made his next movie in your living room, and still pretty much chained to Apple products and services.  Incremental changes no one needed, and not for the first time.

--Oh boy, new version of Amazon’s “free” shipping, just in time for holiday shopping and Amazon’s bottom line.  Instead of a $25 minimum purchase, the fee jumps to $35. Object: get people to pay for their “Prime service,” which brings in money upfront but gives you both a cheaper “free shipping” and a leaf-bag full of emails that you don’t need.

--The NSA says it has data from 70 million French phone calls and emails.  France is in a total twist about that.  But folks in the agency’s secret hideout have dozens of new recipes to try -- deep fried snails and frogs’ legs for example -- and a blueprint for the sewers of Paris, even those below ground.

I’m Wes Richards.  My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2013